In this book, the author, a transportation journalist, celebrates the vision and determination of the ambitious pioneers who developed the railways that would dominate the globe. She reveals the huge impact of the railways as they spread rapidly across the world, linking cities that had hitherto been isolated, stimulating both economic growth and social change on an unprecedented scale. From Panama to the Punjab, she describes the vision and determination of the pioneers who developed railways that would one day span continents, as well as the labour of the navies who built this global network. She shows how cultures were enriched, and destroyed, by the unrelenting construction and how they had a vital role in civil conflict, as well as in two world wars. Indeed, the global expansion of the railways was key to the spread of modernity and the making of the modern world.
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