Civil War Trains Had All the Bells and Whistles

Burning Rage’s cover illustration is an 1872 Currier & Ives print entitled “Prairie fires of the Great West.” It depicts an indomitable steam locomotive crossing the prairie despite a fearsome wild fire. The image would have amazed the average 19^th Century traveler, showing how the mighty iron horse could blithely traverse the dangerous American frontier. And prairie fires were notoriously fast, sweeping in mercurial and capricious destruction with the relentless plains wind. But the iron horse could run with the wind, according to Currier & Ives.

 

The Western & Atlantic Rail Road’s 4-4-0 locomotive, The General, famous for its capture by Union raiders in 1862.  Confederates chased the train from Kennesaw to Ringgold, Georgia. This 1907 photograph is from the Library of Congress Collection.

 

In 1872, the picture must have symbolized the triumph of technology over nature; revealing in vivid color that locomotives and the new Trans-Continental rails had opened the west for progress and opportunity.

I chose this print for the cover to emphasize the importance of the railroads to the times and because exciting portion of Burning Rage involves a train hijacking (to use a modern term) and a running battle aboard the fictional Great Dismal Swamp Express.

The iron horse still holds a place in the romantic quadrants of the American mind. As I write this, I can hear the whistle and rumble of a passing Norfolk Southern freight not five hundred yards away from my front door. Though the trains are computer-controlled, clean-diesel behemoths now, the whistle is decidedly ‘analog,’ harkening back to a time when the locomotive was a relatively simple mechanical hulk of iron and steel, wood-fired, sooty, smoky, combining simple elements of water and heat, to create enormous power.

Those old locomotives resounded with the bells and whistles that are still with us today. They communicate, however rudimentarily, a train’s movement or intention to move; a hooter to clear a crossing, a bell to signal a depot or yard evolution.

I still like the sound of the passing trains. Perhaps the romance of that sound is why we like our modern gadgets, our vehicles especially, with all the “bells and whistles” today. But we would find the old stink pots dirty, noisy and uncomfortable—and they were slooowwww—fifteen or twenty miles an hour was making good time. You’d get a good long look at that prairie fire as you passed it for miles on your way further west.

For much of the train battle in Burning Rage, the Great Dismal Swamp Express is a runaway train, a redball, reaching perilous speeds of fifty miles per hour on a downward grade. They really couldn’t run with the wind, outpace a prairie fire. In reality the old locomotives crept along like snails. When we realize how slow they traveled we understand the romantic portrayals of Old West bandits on horseback riding down a passenger train, revolvers blazing. That would have been entirely possible. There are many contemporary accounts of swash-buckling train robberies. One of the more famous tales involved the Union capture of The General, a Confederate 4-4-0 locomotive train, in Georgia in 1862. The story led to both a Buster Keaton silent picture and an even later Disney feature film.

It has been said that the Civil War came by train, but even as early as the 1840s, the steam locomotive was transforming America. The building of railroads employed thousands of new immigrants, work that allowed them to forge a place for themselves in their new homeland. The railroads brought the country countless new communities, large and small, staked out along wherever the tracks led. Big Rail developed great cities of industry, brought all manner of goods to expanding markets, and demanded economic growth on a grand scale to feed the capitalist powerhouse America had become.

So it is not surprising that trains played an important role in the war. The steam locomotive and the burgeoning American rail system were cutting edge technology by the time of the Civil War. In 1861, Stonewall Jackson utilized the cars of the Manassas Gap Railroad to bring large numbers of battle ready troops to the front at the Battle of Manassas. This is said to be the first time in history that large numbers of soldiers were moved to a battlefront by rail. It started a trend that saw thousands of men, horses and countless tons of supplies ferried by trains for the duration of the war. Thus the railroads became strategically important to both sides. Major battles, important raids and innumerable skirmishes were fought to control or destroy lines, depots and junctions across the South.

In Burning Rage, the action-packed train chapters capture the romance of the rails, and provide a literary vehicle as the sweeping narrative moves from Virginia to South Carolina.  I’ve been careful to not give away why the Great Dismal Swamp Express is hijacked; I’ve not revealed who hijacked it or who tries to take back the cab. I hope you’ll hop aboard to find out these answers for yourself in this runaway Ced Buckley Civil War Mystery. Read, enjoy, and tell your friends about Burning Rage.