Containing 202 hand-drawn color maps of every railroad line in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia, this book provides a unique record of a time when passenger trains still made stops in every town and freight trains carried the bulk of the nation's cargo. Drawn at a scale of 1 inch to 4 miles, the maps include main and branch passenger and freight lines, former steam locomotive and manual signal tower stations, towns that functioned as crew change points, track pans, coaling stations, and a variety of indexes of railroad features. Carpenter is a longtime observer and collector of railroad history. This is the first volume in a series that eventually will provide the first comprehensive atlas of the U.S. post-World War II railroad system. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).