Hagley’s Ben Spohn interviews David Alff about his recent book: The Northeast Corridor: The Trains, the People, the History, the Region. In this comprehensive history of America’s most  heavily-traveled rail line, Alff shows ow what began as a series of disconnected nineteenth century rail lines became the spine connecting America’s Megalopolis, the dense urban forest connecting Boston with Washington D.C., with New York,Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore in between. As Alff explains, the Northeast Corridor is always arriving as the many small railroads that provided service to the Corridor, after over a century of  corporate mergers, and laying new rails and electrifying old ones, came to fall under the stewardship of one railroad, the Penn Central before it fell into bankruptcy. The U.S. government created Amtrak, partly in response to this crisis and it took on passenger service on the Northeast Corridor and nationwide. The Northeast Corridor remains a work in progress with the latest link in the chain, Baltimore’s Frederick Douglass tunnel set to arrive in 2032.

Dr. Alff is an assistant professor of English at SUNY Buffalo. Dr. Alff will be giving an author talk at Hagley on December 5, 2024 at 7:00 PM, in-person at Hagley’s Soda House. You can register for the event here.