For most of the nineteenth century, Eskişehir had been a modest Western Anatolian provincial center of somewhat diminishing importance. In the last twelve years of the century, this course reversed itself spectacularly due to the construction of the German-funded and managed Ottoman Anatolian Railroad. The railroad brought great social, economic, and environmental changes to the lands it passed through. Eskişehir, due to its central location and function as a junction between the Ankara and Konya branches of the railroad was, arguably, the locality most transformed by the railroad in its first two decades of operation. While the Anatolian Railroad has generally been studied from the perspective of diplomatic history, or in terms of its large-scale economic and political effects, I investigate the social, cultural, and local economic history of the regions which the advent of the railroad so greatly transformed. Making use of sources discovered during extensive research at the Ottoman Archive in Istanbul, as well as contemporary newspaper reports in both the foreign press and the nascent local press, I examine the case of Eskişehir as a locale in which the changes were particularly great in an endeavor to discover the reactions and adaptations of locals to these great changes in their technological environments. Prior to the construction of the railroad, exposure to non-Ottoman foreigners was somewhat rare. First with the construction, in which most skilled workers and managers were imported from Europe, and then with the operation of the railroad, when any passenger passing through on the way to Ankara or Konya was obliged to spend the night in Eskişehir, this changed. Due to its central location, Eskişehir became a railroad town with a particularly large population of railroad company employees. Culturally, this meant the opening of a “railroad school” for the children of foreign railroad employees, and a small number of elite local children. Other cultural effects included the establishment of a theater, as well as European- style hotels and restaurants. Of more questionable benefit to the quality of life, Eskişehir housed the major industrial site that was the main storage and repair facility for the railroad, and modern abattoirs sprouted in the vicinity of the train station and befouled the environment for local residents. In these examples and others, my paper demonstrates the railroad effect of urbanizing Eskişehir, focusing on social and small-scale economic effects.