The Civil Engineering of Canals and Railways before 1850 (review)

This frustrating and rewarding volume appears in a new series, Studies in the History of Civil Engineering, intended, according to its general editor, Joyce Brown, as a "reference collection" for "civil engineers--and other readers" (p. xii). Brown, like the editor of this volume, Mike Chrimes, and a majority of Chrimes's contributors, appears to have been trained as a civil engineer. "Other readers," like me, will find here a lode of useful information about how canals and railways were built embedded in a matrix of irrelevant, local, and even antiquarian detail

Civil engineering · Lode · Volume (thermodynamics) · American Environmental and Regional History · Engineering · Geology · Structural Engineering and Vibration Analysis · Water management and technologies