Tracking the Iron Ghost

A front-line participant in the Civil War, the small locomotive Mississippi carried the first railgun used in war, and was later captured and put into service for the Union. After years of postwar work, the refurbished Mississippi traveled to Chicago for presentation at the 1893 Columbian Exposition where she was displayed for millions. Throughout the next century, the little engine was displayed at exhibitions, state and county fairs, and museums where, despite her age and diminutive size, she always drew admirers. This history of a vestige of the early days of American railroads describes the hopes, painstaking labors, and crushing setbacks of early railroad building efforts in the Deep South. Thoroughly researched and filled with rare illustrations, it not only details an antebellum locomotive but illuminates the early days of railroading and the triumph of painstaking historical preservation.