Ghost Rails 1850-1980 Volume 1

"'Ghost Rails' is the first of five planned volumes that detail the history of railroads 1850-1980, the industries they served, and their last runs. The unique geography and location of the Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio state lines make these railroads the true Northwest Passage and the industrial gateway to America.

"Volume I in many ways is as good as a railroad history can get! Much of the material has never been chronicled. Many of the lines essential to an earlier industrial or coal age have been overlooked by historians, but Ghost Rails tells it all. Hundreds of first time photos and maps tell the stories of the men and women of the lost history. The reader will pleasantly find photographs and some history from a key railroad photographer, and one of the first as a railfan, Gus Doeright. And the reader will be introduced to Mr. Frank Vollhardt, a locomotive historian icon from Warren, Ohio, his stories, and photographs.

"Ghost documents the first definitive work on the significant Pennsylvania Railroads, Erie and Pittsburg Railroad, part of the E&A Division. Within the book, photos at critical mileposts from Erie, Linesville, Jamestown, Sharon, Sharpsville, Wheatland and New Castle creatively tell the story of Americas first true industrial line. And on the other hand, the little known North Shore Railroad owned by the Wabash Railroad and the Park Brothers of Freedom, Pennsylvania, manifests a railroad history like no other: the plan of the Wabash across the Pennsylvania Railroads Conway Yards. It existed 1881-1924, a five mile road! The Niles and New Lisbon Railroad, later the Erie, relates the story of the last coal hauler in Ohio. A later chapter tells the history of Leetonia and Cherry Valley Railroad, perhaps the first industrial railroad along the Pa Ohio state line."