The final chapters offer a weak ending to the strong core of the book and make the work read more like a collection of essays than a well-organized reference work. Sensational press accounts did little to reassure the public about the safety of this new mode of transit. The possibility of death or injury, always present whatever the mode of transportation, was heightened in the traveler’s mind by the incessantly clattering wheels and shrieking whistle. The rapid vibration and noise level induced a fatigue not en countered with highway, canal, or river travel. ![]() The author makes a good case for the adverse effects of high-speed travel. Poorer-class travelers tended to mingle more readily in crowded coaches where the lack of privacy discouraged isolated occupations such as reading. First-class travelers in particular hid behind a book or newspaper. Trains traveled so fast that the passenger had little opportunity to study the landscape-and the trip was over so quickly that he had less time to interact with his fellow travelers. The book largely ignores the misery and slowness of prerailway travel and tends to idealize the pastoral nature of everyday life in preindustrial times. The greater speeds, dangers, and impersonal qual ity of travel had a profound effect on the traveling public-much of it negative, according to Schivelbusch’s interpretation of the data. The author is more convincing when he stays with the main themes of the book, and chapters 3 through 9 represent something of a pioneering attempt to explain the physiological and psychological ef fects of rail travel on passengers accustomed to life in the pre industrial age. He supports the claims of Winans as inventor of the eight-wheel railroad car and Whitney as the developer of inter changeable parts, despite long-standing criticism of these canards. Nor is it really a history of technology, for whenever the author attempts to discuss such matters, he reveals a poor under standing of the subject. It is not intended to be a history of travel. This book is about the social/psychological impact of' railway travel in Western Europe ancl North America. ![]() TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 515 The Railway Journey: Trains and Travel in the 19th Century. ![]() In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
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