Uncle Sam's Locomotives

"When the United States entered World War I, the railroads proved unable to cope with the resulting increase in traffic. After eight months President Woodrow Wilson established the United States Railroad Administration to operate them until the war ended. One of the USRA's first acts was to rationalize the railroad supply industry by standardizing rolling-stock designs, including twelve locomotive types, at a time when customized designs were taken for granted. Uncle Sam's Locomotives looks at these magnificent locomotives and discusses how and why the designs were chosen, how they related to existing designs, what standardization entailed, and how each performed.". ""While the standardization experiment had little if any effect on winning the war," remarks Huddleston, "it was highly successful from an engineering standpoint...locomotives of USRA design were generally among the last steamers to be withdrawn from service in the move toward dieselization on American railroads."". "Uncle Sam's Locomotives will be indispensable to those with an interest in steam locomotive history or in the interaction of American industry and government regulation. It deals masterfully with the complex and often controversial relations between the United States Railroad Administration, the railroad companies, the major locomotive builders, and the numerous smaller companies that supplied locomotive accessories. Featured is a picture gallery of USRA locomotives - light and heavy Mikados, Pacifics, Mountains, Switchers, Santa Fes, and Mallets."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.