Horse-Drawn Commercial Vehicles: 255 Illustrations of Nineteenth-Century Stagecoaches, Delivery Wagons, Fire Engines, etc. (Dover Transportation)

Journey back to a bygone era when city streets and country roads were thronged with a rich assortment of horse-powered vehicles: ice wagons, drays, lunch wagons, delivery trucks, fire engines, buggies, carts, log wagons, stage coaches, hearses, and many other such conveyances. You’ll find them all in this treasury of over 250 authentic illustrations many unavailable elsewhere depicting a wide variety of commercial vehicles of long ago. The author, a former member of the curatorial staff of the Smithsonian Institution’s Division of Transportation, has carefully selected detailed engravings of the period, many from rare trade periodicals in the collection of the Smithsonian, as well as photographs. Well-researched captions accompany the illustrations, focusing on how the design of each vehicle served its specific purposes and needs, and supplying various dimensions, coloring, and other details. The author has also written an engrossing historical introduction that sharply defines the development of commercial vehicles in an age of headlong expansion and industrial advancement. Invaluable for anyone interested in antique transportation, this volume is also an ideal source of royalty-free illustrations for use in ads, catalogs, book and magazine illustrations, and elsewhere.

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