A work fashioned to commemorate a century and a half of rail transport in Spain, the Historia de los ferrocarriles de Iberoamérica, 1837–1995 offers readers a comprehensive survey of Latin America’s even older railroad experience. Coordinator Jesús Sanz Fernández and his five collaborators, all scholars with ties to Spanish railway, research, or university institutions, focus their essays on the factual details of Latin American railroad construction, operation, and economic impact, deliberately avoiding rail-related aesthetic, cultural, political, and social matters. While “entire libraries” deal with the latter, “at times exhaustively” in their view, the authors are determined to “fill the void” that has made finding basic quantitative information about Latin American railroads so “exasperating” (p. 11).
Historia de los ferrocarriles de Iberoamérica contains a general essay on Latin American railroads in historical perspective and a conclusion that sums up the findings of the volume. In between lie eight chapters, each with...
