BrunswickHistoricalPress Blog

Let Me Hear From Other RR Historians

I am working on another book aboout railroading during the Civil War. 

I am looking for more information about the “armored” railroad car used during the War by the Union forces.  It looked  like a specially built box car (“house car” in the terminology of the day) with sheets of metal added to the sides and a slot in front from which pokes a cannon.  The car was pushed along by an unarmored locomotive, with the engineer up in the cab, visible to all and a “sitting duck” as a target.  I would like to know whether this impractical combination saw any action during the War or was it merely intended to scare Confederate soldiers?

Secondly, historians seem convinced that the Confederates destroyed B&O rails, heated red-hot which seems unlikely) by using horses to bend them around trees.  Some of the pre-steel rails of the 1860s were light weight, but is such a procedure likely to have happened, or even been possible? If they were heated over over a pile of burning ties they must have been very hot ties!

I would like to have more information about the North vs. South sympathies of B&O trainmen and track workers.

Can you help me with any information about the above? Are you interested in railroading and the Civil War?  Please respond by email to me at excelsior6@verizon.net.

Visit my website at BrunswickHistoricalPress.com to learn about my other books about B&O railroading.  – PM