I am a Ph.D. candidate in modern Chinese history at the University of California, San Diego. My research traces the historical and economic development of China National Railways (CNR), examining how the railways facilitated the formation of the modern Chinese industrial state. As the nation’s largest single employer, CNR was the lynchpin of China’s planned economy and a critical strategic asset to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Unlike the rest of China’s economy during the Mao years, I posit that CNR prioritized professional, developmental, and operational concerns over political mandates. I argue that the work and expertise of professional railroaders permitted the railway’s growth along a distinctive developmental path that included trade with enemy nations, internal market competitions, and connections with the outside world at a time when the PRC emphasized economic self-reliance. Intended to be the hallmark of a centrally planned economy, the railways, led by this cohort of professional railroaders, deviated from the dreams of the PRC state, prioritizing expertise over political correctness, professionalism over politics, and conventional technology over socialist science. By examining railway development and operations in the early PRC, my dissertation highlights the daily realities of economic decision-making, investigating how individual actions laid the infrastructural foundation of China’s current economy. My work on CNR intervenes with the existing historical narrative of Chinese economic history, highlighting the activities of individuals whose decisions steered the successful development of CNR through the economic and humanitarian disasters of Maoist China. My work has been supported by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, the UC Institute on Global and Cooperation, the Esherick-Ye Family Foundation, the Lexington Group for Transportation History, the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society, the National Bureau of Asian Research, the Hagley Museum & Library, and the American Council of Learned Societies.