Day and night for well over 100 years, the New Haven Railroad plied the rails between New York City and Boston, its mere 1,800 miles of track carrying more passengers than any other railroad in the history of the U.S. rail industry. This illustrated history revisits the days when New England’s fortunes were inseparable from the New Haven’s—when trains like the Merchants Limited, Yankee Clipper, Cranberry, and Quaker carried tourists and commuters to the great cities of the East Coast, and to destinations like Cape Cod, Hyannis, and Woods Hole, boat connections to Martha’s Vineyard, and ski slopes in the Berkshires.

Black-and-white archival images and period color photographs, along with Peter E. Lynch’s authoritative text, chronicle the trains and routes—in particular, the signature South Shore Line—detailing the various forms of motive power, rolling stock, and services that made the railroad’s passenger network unparalleled in its day. With pictures of ephemera, stations, and terminals—including Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan—advertisements, route maps, timetables, and interior views of cars, this book provides a dramatic visual account of train travel in its heyday, and an elegiac view of its subsequent decline.