Men on Iron Horses Dyslexia Series

About this curriculum

The stories in this series explore the evolution of the locomotive and the development of the railroad in America—and the men who made it happen—revolutionizing the economy and ushering in an era of unity across the country. A Special Series of Books for Children Who Struggle to Read In the early 1830s, people in America began building the first locomotives and laying railroad tracks across the country. Mail, goods, and passengers all needed a way to traverse the nation, and the iron horse seemed the best way to do it. For the next forty years, the railroad slowly snaked westward to the edges of the frontier, then crossed great expanses of untamed wilderness to get to California, connecting East with West in a way that had not been possible before. The work was not easy, nor was it without problems. Someone had to invent the first locomotive. Someone had to make it work well. Someone had to figure out how to keep passengers from being choked by smoke and burned by falling sparks from the locomotive’s smokestack. Someone had to recognize that the entire system of trains and tracks needed to be standardized so that a train in New York could travel on a track in Boston…