Steam, Smoke, and Steel: Back in Time with Trains

All aboard! This train travels through history making stops in time to learn about the progress of travel by rail.

Hop up into the cab of a speeding modern-day locomotive and look down the tracks into the past. Perhaps these are the same tracks that the diesel-electric locomotives of thirty years ago thundered down, pulling their loads. Perhaps you can see the steam engines of thirty years before that. Watch time unravel and the landscape change as the history of trains barrels through the pages of STEAM, SMOKE AND STEEL: BACK IN TIME WITH TRAINS.

The first trains puffed great billowing clouds of smoke and showered passengers with burning embers as they sped down the rails at a pulse-pounding twenty miles an hour! By the 1850's, however, trains were traveling much faster, much farther, and much cleaner and train travel contributed to the growth of our nation. Young readers will be fascinated by the exciting -- and sometimes dangerous -- story of trains while they learn about the different kinds of engines, equipment, and jobs necessary for operating trains throughout history. The young narrator introduces readers to trains from the time of his great-great-great-great-great grandfather at the turn of the nineteenth century to his father's train of today, showing the great changes that invention and progress have brought over time.

Patrick O'Brien's striking illustrations emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and romance of the train. Detailed and richly textured oil paintings take readers on a trip through time to ride aboard open-air cars, travel through mountain passes, and roar down the rails on high-speed bullet trains. Budding engineers will love getting a glimpse at the past and dreaming about the future of trains.

• All Aboard Trains (Reading Railroad Books)
• The Big Book of Trains
• Trains! (Step into Reading)
• Locomotive (Caldecott Medal Book)
• National Geographic Readers: Trains
• My Best Book of Trains (Best Books of)
• Ultimate Sticker Book: Train: More Than 60 Reusable Full-Color Stickers
• DK Eyewitness Books: Train: Discover the Story of Railroads from the Age of Steam to the High-Speed Trains o from the Age of Steam to the High-Speed Trains of Today
• My Big Train Book (My Big Board Books)
• Train Stickers (Dover Little Activity Books Stickers)