Through the years poets and journalists have captured the character of the locomotive, some transforming it into an animate creature, others such as William Dean Howells and Thomas Wolf relating a symbolic odyssey by train. Here, in a pictorial history, Jim Shaughnessy turns an eloquent photographer's eye to the Delaware and Hudson, the line that began in 1823 as a canal system to transport Pennsylvania coal to New York State. The Delaware made early railroad history by operating the first steam locomotive in America, the Stourbridge Lion. Its president of thirty-one years, L. F. Loree -- a highly irascible eccentric, who had an obsessive devotion to British design -- was fascinated with experimental traction power and went on to produce the groundbreaking Loree locomotive.The Delaware and Hudson is an all-encompassing account of its 144-year history, which includes the mining in the region as well as the steamboat operations along Lake George and Lake Champlain. Jim Shaughnessy incorporates over 600 photographs and illustrations, maps, and timetables.