On December 5th HathiTrust's collections grew to 16 million volumes! Book number 16,000,000 was digitized and deposited by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Osborne's London and Birmingham Railway guide. Illustrated, published in 1840 at the height of "railway fever" in Great Britain, was written as something of a guidebook to inevitable progress. In the introduction, George Edward Osborne wrote:
Many who, but a few years since, scarcely penetrated beyond the county in which they happened to have been born, are now induced to visit places far more remote, from the facility and comfort afforded them by railway transit, which enables them to travel over thousands of miles with greater personal ease than they formerly could over fifty. Thus they are brought into contact with numerous individuals in various parts of the kingdom, and become acquainted with customs, manners and habits which previously were wholly unknown to them. The result of this mutual communication of facts and ideas must be an improved state of society. The prejudices and superstitions which have long held sway in the more retired localities, will be swept away before the flood of knowledge which will now pour in upon them.
Osborne's Guide combines travel narrative, rules and regulations, tables of fees, station diagrams, poetry, and engravings intended to educate the new population of railway passengers about the engineering wonder that was the Railway.
