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2010 | Photograph
Ruins of the Blue Ridge Railroad Tunnel near Crozet, Virginia
The ruins of the Blue Ridge Tunnel, as it appears today. The Blue Ridge Railroad and Blue Ridge Tunnel were built by the state?s Board of Public Works. When the railroad company?s chief engineer, Claudius Crozet, requested slave labor, the board had to decide whether the state should purchase slaves for the project. The tunnel has long since been abandoned, but the brick and stonework is the original, much of it slave-built.
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1862 | Photograph
Ruins at Manassas Junction, March 1862
Numerous railroad hubs in the Confederacy became sites of repeated fighting, both large- and small-scale. Here, the ruins were the work of the Confederate Army as it abandoned its forward position in northern Virginia to protect Richmond.
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1861 | Photograph
Roundhouse at Alexandria
A Matthew Brady image of the roundhouse at Alexandria, Virginia during the Civil War.
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1861 | Photograph
Rails for military railroad, Alexandria, Virginia.
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1850 | Photograph
Railroad Workers, 1850s
Few original images remain of railroad workers in the 1850s, especially of construction crews, whether free labor or enslaved. Northern railroad companies employed thousands of men on their payrolls in a dizzying array of occupations.
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July 25, 1864 | Photograph
Railroad mortar "The Dictator" at Petersburg, Virginia, July 25, 1864
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1862 | Photograph
Railroad construction workers hammer track as a third watches
African American laborers, free and contraband, worked for the Union Army to build and repair rail lines across the South. Note the bent and broken rails scattered in the background, signs of earlier destruction.
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October 10, 1922 | Photograph
President Gorman and Mrs. Stevens at the Dedication of the Samuel B. Reed Monument in Joliet, Illinois, October 10, 1922
This is a photograph of President Gorman and Mrs. Stevens at the dedication of the Samuel B. Reed monument in Joliet, Illinois on October 10, 1922. The monument is still located on the grounds of the Joliet, Illinois Will County Court House, approximately 75 feet from the northeast corner of the building. It reads: "On this spot in 1850 Samuel Benedict Reed, Civil Engineer, pioneer railroad builder, citizen of Joliet, began the survey for the present Chicago Rock Island and Pacific, the first railroad to reach and bridge the Mississippi River. The first train into Joliet reached this initial point October 10, 1852. As Chief Engineer of Construction he directed the building of the Union Pacific, the first trans-continental railroad, the completion of which in 1869 realized the dream of Columbus: a westward trade route to the Indies. This rock from the summit of the Continental Divide on the line of the Union Pacific was placed here through the cooperation of these two railroads and dedicated October 10, 1922."
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1864 | Photograph
No. 1. Steam engines "Telegraph" and "O. A. Bull," Atlanta, Ga., 1864
No. 1. Steam engines ?Telegraph? and ?O. A. Bull? remained in position amid the ruins of a Confederate roundhouse in Atlanta in 1864. The South possessed some of the most beautiful depots and railroad facilities in the nation in 1861. Sherman?s campaigns sought to dismantle the Confederate railroad system and in so doing deny any claim to modernity and progress. African American workers stand atop the old Georgia Railroad flatcar.
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1864 | Photograph
Military Railroad Bridge over Potomac Creek, 1864
This bridge was destroyed and rebuilt several times. In May 1862 General Irwin McDowell employed hundreds of contraband laborers, who replaced the bridge in nine days. Here, in May 1864, the U.S. Military Railroads, again with large numbers of black freedmen, constructed the bridge in forty hours. Photographs such as this one indicated the complexity, cost, and scale of the bridges across many of the South?s rivers and also conveyed the precarious, and sublime, ways the railroad was thought to defy nature.
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1861 | Photograph
Military railroad bridge over Potomac Creek on the Richmond, Frederickburg & Potomac Railroad
A trestle railroad bridge built by the United States Military Railroad Construction Corps.
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2010 | Photograph
Long Bridge, 2010
When Kate Brown crossed the Potomac River on this bridge in 1868 and was forcibly removed from the ladies? car in Virginia, the Washington Monument was only half-completed. Brown?s work at the U.S. Capitol placed her in contact with powerful Republican Party lawyers and politicians. Her lawsuit against the company went to the U.S. Supreme Court five years later.
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1928 | Photograph
John W. Garrett
John W. Garrett, President of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad from 1858-1884, steered the railroad through the crisis of the Civil War, maintaining a firm commitment to the Union. In the strike Garrett regretted pay cuts and attempted to retain his employees, but firmly held to the principle of free labor's right to contract.
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1911 | Photograph
Interior of a Dining Car
This image from The Modern Railroad (1911) captures the interior of an elegant dining car, including several of its male and female passengers.
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1862 | Photograph
Harper's Ferry and The Maryland Heights
Harper's Ferry, an important railroad terminus at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, changed hands eight times during the Civil War. In this photograph, the landscape and the significance of the river valleys are particularly obvious.
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1911 | Photograph
Great Northern Locomotives: Old and New
This image from The Modern Railroad(1911), shows the first engine of the James J. Hill system sitting next to one of the Great Northern Railroad's more recent models.
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N.D. | Photograph
Grading camp for the Union Pacific Railroad in the Rocky Mountains
This is a photograph of the grading camp for the Union Pacific Railroad in the Rocky Mountains.
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1864 | Photograph
General William T. Sherman at Fort No. 7, Atlanta, Ga., overlooking Chattanooga Railroad lines, 1864
Sherman recognized the importance and vulnerability of railroad corridors. In September 1862 Sherman ordered an expedition to ?destroy? the town of Randolph, Tennessee, because guerrillas had fired on Union steamships from the banks of the Mississippi River. In 1864 he adopted similarly hard measures to protect the railroads during his Atlanta Campaign.
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3, 1862 | Photograph
Fredericksburg from the river. Showing Confederate troops and bridge. (taken at a distance of one mile.)
Similar in composition to the December 13, 1862 Harper's Weekly image, in this picture the close proximity of armies to one another is evident.
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1864 | Photograph
Fortified Railroad Bridge Across Cumberland River, Nashville, Tennessee, 1864
Confederate guerrilla forces, often operating as regular cavalry units, attacked Union-controlled railroad lines. They shot into trains, destroyed tracks, took prisoners, killed Union soldiers, and burned bridges. Union commanders responded by developing block houses and fortified bridges to protect the vulnerable lines, equipping trains with special armor, recruiting loyal local citizens to ferret out guerrillas, and dispatching special counterinsurgency cavalry units to track down the Confederate guerrillas.
