Hard Coal and Coal Cars: Hauling Anthracite on the New York, Ontario & Western Railway
Karig opens his history with the intense competition for the rights to eastern Pennsylvania’s lucrative coal-hauling business. He then details the technological developments that transformed coal cars from wooden carts carrying just a few hundred pounds to steel hoppers hauling several tons. Bringing the story into the twentieth century, Karig explains how the O & W’s ownership ultimately abandoned the coal-hauling business in the 1950s as coal was supplanted by more reliable and convenient home heating fuels.
Rich with the romance of the railroad and crucial to any understanding of Pennsylvania history, Hard Coal and Coal Cars will be the definitive book on a fascinating chapter of American life.
Customer Review: A wonderful labor of love about anthracite and coal cars
This is a great book about (ultimately) the cars used to haul anthracite coal on the New York, Ontario and Western Railway. Clearly a labor of love (the author's grandfather was an engineer on the road), it covers the anthracite industry, the railroads involved, and railroad car construction and appliances, before getting into the cars used by the NYO&W itself. The biggest complaint would be that the book is too short, especially in its introductory chapters. The author has clearly done a lot of research, from which he has drawn some clear conclusions, well argued and well-written. It will be of great usefulness to anyone interested in the anthracite industry and its associated railroads, rairoad car construction, model railroaders, and of course the NYO&W.
The author, the publisher (University of Scranton Press), and everyone else involved are to be congratulated for a book that is so well put together, and which clearly is the result of much effort and devotion by all concerned. It is a wonderful (and unfortunately infrequent) contrast to so many other railroad history books that seem to be just thrown together, with no one caring about the final result.
Customer Review: Spectacular intellectual product
A really definitive study of coal/coal cars that extends far beyond the NYO&W. Any industrial historian or model railroader interested in coal haulers needs a copy of this spectacular intellectual product. See Railroad Model Craftsman for October 2006 for a full, very positive rview.
