Thursday, November 16 at 7:00 P.M.
Soda House Auditorium
Registration via Eventbrite

On November 16 we will welcome Al Churella back to Hagley for a talk based on the second volume of his monumental history of the Pennsylvania Railroad. His talk, Inflection Points: W. W. Atterbury and the Destiny of the Pennsylvania Railroad, charts the company’s dramatic changes between the end of World War I and the Great Depression. Churella will explore how Atterbury (as company president) transformed the PRR into a diversified transportation company, with investments in trucks, buses, cargo containers, and airplanes. His objective was to turn the company into a large self-sustaining system. During these trying years Atterbury's professed commitment to more efficient transportation disguised his determination to protect the Pennsylvania Railroad by any means necessary.

Al Churella is professor of history at Kennesaw State College near Atlanta. He is the author (among other works) of The Pennsylvania Railroad: Volume 1, Building an Empire, 1846–1917. Churella’s talk is drawn from his new book, The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume 2: The Age of Limits, 1917-1933, that will be available for sale and signing by the author.