Lennie Grimaldi

Connecticut Whistle-stops:: Greenwich to New Haven (Images of America) Lennie Grimaldi

Richly illustrated, Connecticut Whistle Stops: Greenwich to New Haven tells the fascinating history of a rail line and the communities it serves. The motto of the state of Connecticut is Qui Transtulit Sustenet, which translates loosely from the Latin as "He who commutes thrives." The state was founded by commuters of a sort: itinerant preachers looking for congregations. Much later, when the railroads finally came along, the state bloomed. Today, Connecticut's rail line from Greenwich to New Haven is a thriving transportation network for Manhattan-bound commuters. Each workday, roughly 85,000 commuters ride the New Haven Line into Grand Central Terminal in New York.

Profiled in Connecticut Whistle Stops are ten rail communities along the coast. Full of eye-catching photographs, the chapters highlight the impact that the rail line has had on Greenwich, Stamford, Darien, South Norwalk, Westport, Fairfield, Bridgeport, Stratford, Milford, and New Haven. The history offers all the elements of an award-winning movie: laborers building the railroad, America's best-known tycoons financing a rail monopoly and then running it into the ground, bankruptcy, and rebirth.