Company, State, and Region: Three Approaches to Railroad History

Don L. Hofsommer. The Tootin' Louie: A History of the Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. xvi + 374 pp. ISBN 0-8166-4366-0, $39.95 (paper).

Don L. Hofsommer. Steel Trails of Hawkeyeland: Iowa's Railroad Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005. xiii + 349 pp. ISBN 0-253-34515-4, $75.00.

Don L. Hofsommer. Minneapolis and the Age of Railways. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. xiii + 337 pp. ISBN 0-8166-4501-9, $39.95.

Railroad history has survived a near-death experience. Once at the leading edge of business history and the Chandlerian synthesis, this sub-discipline largely fell out of favor with academic audiences, becoming the province of the railfan. In recent years, however, a new generation of historians has reawakened interest in the railroads, often by adopting perspectives alien to the traditions of first-generation railroad history. A prolific Don Hofsommer has not only contributed to this reinvigoration of an academic discipline, he has also incorporated some of the best recent railway history into volumes targeted at amateur historians. Each book embodies a different approach to the construction of railroad history and although their level of relevance to academic historians varies considerably, they offer compelling insights into the diversity of approach and audience that characterizes modern railroad history. This variety reflects the overall diversity railroad history itself, raising an obvious question: "Is there a 'best' method of doing railroad history?"

The Tootin' Louie adheres to the most conventional conceptual framework and is most obviously targeted to the railfan market. It details the lackluster career of the Minneapolis and St Louis, initially promoted by Minneapolis entrepreneurs to increase their city's prominence as a commercial center, only to lose control to eastern financiers who ultimately presided over the decline of agricultural traffic on the northern Great Plains, followed by receivership and abandonment. Such corporate histories are legion, and some describe the smallest of railroads in excruciating detail. Yet, they possess a definite inherent value, serving as a reference for more thematic analyses and, in the best cases, introducing new interpretations of the railroads' role in business and society. These internalist histories of a single railroad organization have always been popular within academic circles—witness books by John Stover and James Dilts on the Baltimore & Ohio, Richard Overton's analyses of the Burlington, Robert Athearn's Rebel of the Rockies, Ralph and Muriel Hidy's work on the Great Northern (to which Hofsommer also contributed), Hofsommer's own Southern Pacific, 1901–1985, Maury Klein's massive two-volume study of the Union Pacific, and numerous books by H. Roger Grant. A similar approach uses key railroads as exemplars of empire, progress, and nation building. Examples include a mediocre recent book by Stephen Ambrose and a far superior one from David Bain on the Transcontinental Railroad, matched in Canada by Pierre Berton's The Impossible Railway, The National Dream, and The Last Spike, and A. A. den Otter's The Philosophy of Railways.¹ These biographies of corporations are matched by biographies of the great men of railroading's golden age, including Alfred Chandler's study of Henry Varnum Poor, Maury Klein's analyses of Jay Gould and E. H. Harriman, and Albro Martin's portrayal of James Jerome Hill.²

Biographies of railroaders and railroad corporations offer a high level of accessibility to lay audiences, so it is hardly surprising that this genre has encouraged amateur historians to produce works whose research, content, and analysis rival those of academic authors. Notable among these are the locomotive engineer John Signor (with excellent histories of both railroad companies and railroad locales), retired urban planner Jack Burgess, modeler and railroadiana collector Tony Thompson, and retired airline pilot Mallory Hope Ferrell. Jim Chiddix, a telecommunications engineer, and MacKinnon Simpson, a self-proclaimed writer/historian/designer, have published a history of the Oahu Railway & Land Company that has set...