Book by DePaul Transportation Expert Examines Rail Lines in 64 Cities and Towns

Few swatches from the collective quilt of Americana are as evocative as the sights, sounds and stories associated with the evolution of railroads. A new book by DePaul University transportation expert Joseph Schwieterman, entitled “When the Railroad Leaves Town,” provides a fresh perspective on the legacy of disappearing railroads and those communities that are left behind.

Schwieterman, associate professor of public services management and director of DePaul’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development, integrates his expertise in urban planning and meticulous research on community history in an interesting survey of the abandonment of railroads.

According to Schwieterman, the closing of railroads is a phenomenon that has passed before the nation’s eyes with very little notice. “Half of America’s railroad routes have been abandoned since World War I due to a shift to automobiles, trucks, airplanes and pipelines,” explained Schwieterman. The book elaborates on how this shift affects numerous towns whose historical character is tied to the railroad. He said one of his objectives in writing the book was to preserve the history that is being lost as people die and move out of town and as records are destroyed.

Schwieterman’s quest to study “ghost railroads” began many years ago and didn’t end until he had logged more than 15,000 auto, bus and rail miles. He said he visited out-of-the-way places in every state on the American mainland, spending countless hours tracing abandoned railroad routes and meeting with old-time railroaders, town planners, historians and townspeople. The book retraces the life span of rail lines in 64 municipalities in 26 states.

A 376-page, coffee-table-style book, “When the Railroad Leaves Town” includes 65 maps and an interesting assortment of 136 black and white photographs. The photography, most of which was done by the author, brings just the right touch of nostalgia to a subject that is more than a century old.

“When the Railroad Leaves Town” focuses on vanishing rail lines in the Eastern portion of the country. Schwieterman is working on a second volume that will examine rail line abandonment in the western half of the U.S. The book speaks of an imaginary line that once separated America’s eastern and western railroad systems. The line stretched from Chicago to Peoria and south to St. Louis, following the Mississippi River all the way to New Orleans. Along this dividing point, one would find significant interchange points between carriers serving the East and West portions of the country.

Schwieterman’s research involved the compiling of a database of about 3,000 populous municipalities – all of which today are inaccessible by rail. His analysis reveals how the closing of rail road lines frees up huge parcels of land for economic development, creates thousands of miles of nature and recreational trails, and shifts thousands of carloads of freight to trucks each year.

“The towns and cities I describe here are enormously diverse, ranging from places as small as Thalmann, Georgia, which has a population of about 50, to places as large as Miami Beach, Fla. and Troy, Mich. whose populations are approaching 100,000,” Schwieterman writes in his introduction.

In providing a close examination of the historical, political and social implications of rail line abandonment, Schwieterman highlights similarities and differences affecting the railroad divestment process. Each chapter of the book unfolds the unique relationship between a municipality and its railroads. Some towns, such as Saranac Lake, N.Y., are about the business of rehabilitating dormant rail lines and Miami Beach has rekindled an interest in restoring rail services as a solution to traffic congestion. Other towns – such as Gloversville, N.Y., once the nation’s leading center of leather and glove production – relinquished their roles as industrial centers after the rail lines left. Perhaps the most dismal rail abandonment saga involves Kirksville, Mo., where a town of 17,000 people spent several years and thousands of dollars in a futile attempt to hold on to its rail line service.

The book points out that the disappearance of the railroad is not always an economic curse. Railroad abandonment does impede the attraction of employers in the heavy industrial sector. However, urban planners recognize that an absence of noise, vibration and decreased danger to pedestrians and motorists clears the way for commercial and residential development.

One of the most intriguing ironies addressed by Schwieterman in his introduction is that although America’s railroads operate with less than half the track that they had during World War I, they are shipping more ton-miles of freight than ever before. The conclusion is that today’s railroads are operating more efficiently than ever before, which accounts for a renewed prosperity of the railroad industry as a whole.

“When the Railroad Leaves Town: American Communities in the Age of Rail Line Abandonment,” Vol. 1, Eastern United States is published by Truman State University Press in Kirksville, Mo. The book retails for $24.95 (paper cover) and $39.95 (hard cover). A second volume covering the Western United States will be published in early 2003. Schwieterman has published extensively on air, rail and urban planning issues and is a long-standing contributor to the Transportation Research Board, a unit of the National Academy of Sciences. He holds a master of science degree in transportation from Northwestern University and a doctoral degree in public policy studies from the University of Chicago.