The history of the United States, a country in North America, began with the settlement of Indigenous people before 15,000 BC. Numerous cultures formed. The arrival of Christopher Columbus in the year of 1492 started the European colonization of the Americas. Most colonies formed after 1600. By the 1760s, thirteen British colonies contained 2.5 million people along the Atlantic coast east of the Appalachian Mountains. After defeating France, the British government imposed a series of new taxes after 1765, rejecting the colonists' argument that new taxes needed their approval. Tax resistance, especially the Boston Tea Party (1773), led to punitive laws by Parliament designed to end self-government in Massachusetts.
The Kingdom of France was a medieval and early modern monarchy in Western Europe. It was one of the most powerful states in Europe and a great power since the Late Middle Ages and the Hundred Years' War. It was also an early colonial power, with possessions around the world.
New France was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spain in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris (1763).
Railroads played a large role in the development of the United States from the industrial revolution in the North-east (1810–1850) to the settlement of the West (1850–1890). The American railroad mania began with the founding of the first passenger and freight line in the nation of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1827 and the "Laying of the First Stone" ceremonies and beginning of its long construction heading westward over the obstacles of the Appalachian Mountains eastern chain the following year of 1828, and flourished with continuous railway building projects for the next 45 years until the financial Panic of 1873 followed by a major economic depression bankrupted many companies and temporarily stymied and ended growth.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
The Northeastern United States, also referred to as simply the Northeast, is a geographical region of the United States bordered to the north by Canada, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the south by the Southern United States, and to the west by the Midwestern United States. The Northeast is one of the four regions defined by the United States Census Bureau for the collection and analysis of statistics.
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first common carrier railroad and the oldest railroad in the United States, with its first section opening in 1830. It came into being mostly because the city of Baltimore wanted to compete with the newly constructed Erie Canal and another canal being proposed by Pennsylvania, which would have connected Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. At first this railroad was located entirely in the state of Maryland, with an original line built from the port of Baltimore west to Sandy Hook.
Although the antebellum South started early to build railways, it concentrated on short lines linking cotton regions to oceanic or river ports, and the absence of an interconnected network was a major handicap during the Civil War (1861–1865). The North and Midwest constructed networks that linked every city by 1860 before the war. In the heavily settled Midwestern Corn Belt, over 80 percent of farms were within 5 miles (8km) of a railway, facilitating the shipment of grain, hogs, and cattle to national and international markets. A large number of short lines were built, but thanks to a fast developing financial system based on Wall Street and oriented to railway bonds, the majority were consolidated into 20 trunk lines by 1890. State and local governments often subsidized lines, but rarely owned them.
The American Civil War was the first in which large armies depended heavily on railroads to bring supplies. For the Confederate States Army, the system was fragile and was designed for short hauls of cotton to the nearest river or ocean port. During the war, new parts were hard to obtain, and the system deteriorated from overuse, lack of maintenance, and systematic destruction by Union raiders.
The Corn Belt is a region of the Midwestern United States that, since the 1850s, has dominated corn production in the United States. More generally, the concept of the "Corn Belt" connotes the area of the Midwest dominated by farming and agriculture.
Wall Street is an eight-block-long street running roughly northwest to southeast from Broadway to South Street, at the East River, in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial services industry, or New York–based financial interests.
The system was largely built by 1910, but then trucks arrived to eat away the freight traffic, and automobiles (and later airplanes) to devour the passenger traffic. After 1940, the use of diesel electric locomotives made for much more efficient operations that needed fewer workers on the road and in repair shops.
A series of bankruptcies and consolidations left the rail system in the hands of a few large operations by the 1980s. Almost all long-distance passenger traffic was shifted to Amtrak in 1971, a government-owned operation. Commuter rail service is provided near a few major cities such as New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and the District of Columbia. Computerization and improved equipment steadily reduced employment, which peaked at 2.1 million in 1920, falling to 1.2 million in 1950 and 215,000 in 2010. Route mileage peaked at 254,251 miles (409,177km) in 1916 and fell to 139,679 miles (224,792km) in 2011.[1]
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak, is a passenger railroad service that provides medium- and long-distance intercity service in the contiguous United States and to nine Canadian cities.
Freight railroads continue to play an important role in the United States' economy, especially for moving imports and exports using containers, and for shipments of coal and, since 2010, of oil. According to the British news magazine The Economist, "They are universally recognized in the industry as the best in the world."[2] Productivity rose 172% between 1981 and 2000, while rates rose 55% (after accounting for inflation). Rail's share of the American freight market rose to 43%, the highest for any rich country.[3]
The French and Indian War (1754–1763) pitted the colonies of British America against those of New France, each side supported by military units from the parent country and by American Indian allies. At the start of the war, the French colonies had a population of roughly 60,000 settlers, compared with 2 million in the British colonies. The outnumbered French particularly depended on the Indians.
A gravity railroad or gravity railway is a railroad on a slope that allows cars carrying minerals or passengers to coast down the slope by the force of gravity alone. The speed of the cars is controlled by a braking mechanism on one or more cars on the train. The cars are then hauled back up the slope using animal power or a stationary engine and a cable, a chain or one or more wide, flat iron bands. A much later example in California used 4 ft 81⁄2 instandard gauge steam engines to pull gravity cars back to the summit of Mt. Tamalpais.
Tramways are lightly laid railways, sometimes worked without locomotives. Since individual tramway cars are not intended to carry the weight of typical standard-gauge railway equipment, the tramways over which they operate may be built of less substantial materials. Tramways can take many forms, sometimes just tracks temporarily laid on the ground to move materials around a factory, mine or quarry. Many, if not most, are narrow gauge railway technologies. Motive power can be manual, animal, cable hauled by stationary engine, or utilize small locomotives. At the other extreme they could be complex and lengthy systems, such as the Lee Moor Tramway in the county of Devonshire, England, in the United Kingdom.
The B&O started developing steam locomotives in 1829 with Peter Cooper's Tom Thumb.[8] This was the first American-built locomotive to run in the U.S., although it was intended as a demonstration of the potential of steam traction rather than as a revenue-earning locomotive.[7]:96 Many of the earliest locomotives for American railroads were imported from England, including the Stourbridge Lion and the John Bull, but a domestic locomotive manufacturing industry was quickly established, with locomotives like the DeWitt Clinton being built in the 1830s.[9] The B&O's westward route reached the Ohio River in 1852, the first eastern seaboard railroad to do so.[10]:Ch.V
By 1850, 9,000 miles (14,000km) of railroad lines had been built.[11] The federal government operated a land grant system between 1855 and 1871, through which new railway companies in the uninhabited West were given millions of acres they could sell or pledge to bondholders. A total of 129million acres (520,000km2) were granted to the railroads before the program ended, supplemented by a further 51million acres (210,000km2) granted by the states, and by various government subsidies. This program enabled the opening of numerous western lines, especially the Union Pacific-Central Pacific with fast service from San Francisco to Omaha and east to Chicago. West of Chicago, many cities grew up as rail centers, with repair shops and a base of technically literate workers.[12]
Railroads soon replaced many canals and turnpikes and by the 1870s had significantly displaced steamboats as well.[13] The railroads were superior to these alternative modes of transportation, particularly water routes because they lowered costs in two ways. Canals and rivers were unavailable in the winter season due to freezing, but the railroads ran year-round despite poor weather. And railroads were safer: the likelihood of a train crash was less than the likelihood of a boat sinking. The railroads provided cost-effective transportation because they allowed shippers to have a smaller inventory of goods, which reduced storage costs during winter, and to avoid insurance costs from the risk of losing goods during transit.[14]
Likewise, railroads changed the style of transportation. For the common person in the early 1800s, transportation was often traveled by horse or stagecoach. The network of trails along which coaches navigated were riddled with ditches, potholes, and stones. This made travel fairly uncomfortable. Adding to injury, coaches were cramped with little leg room. Travel by train offered a new style. Locomotives proved themselves a smooth, headache free ride with plenty of room to move around. Some passenger trains offered meals in the spacious dining car followed by a good night sleep in the private sleeping quarters.[15] Railroad companies in the North and Midwest constructed networks that linked nearly every major city by 1860. In the heavily settled Corn Belt (from Ohio to Iowa), over 80 percent of farms were within 5 miles (8.0km) of a railway. A large number of short lines were built, but thanks to a fast developing financial system based on Wall Street and oriented to railway securities, the majority were consolidated into 20 trunk lines by 1890.[16] Most of these railroads made money and ones that didn't were soon bought up and incorporated in a larger system or "rationalized". Although the transcontinental railroads dominated the media, with the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 dramatically symbolizing the nation's unification after the divisiveness of the Civil War, most construction actually took place in the industrial Northeast and agricultural Midwest, and was designed to minimize shipping times and costs.[17] The railroads in the South were repaired and expanded and then, after a lot of preparation, changed from a 5-foot gauge to standard gauge of 4 foot 8 ½ inches in two days in May 1886.[18]
With its extensive river system, the United States supported a large array of horse-drawn or mule-drawn barges on canals and paddle wheel steamboats on rivers that competed with railroads after 1815 until the 1870s. The canals and steamboats lost out because of the dramatic increases in efficiency and speed of the railroads, which could go almost anywhere year round. The railroads were faster and went to many places a canal would be impractical or too expensive to build or a natural river never went. Railroads also had better scheduling since they often could go year round, more or less ignoring the weather. Canals and river traffic were cheaper if you lived on or near a canal or river that wasn't frozen over part of the year, but only a few did. Long distance transport of goods by wagon to a canal or river was slow and expensive. A railroad to a city made it an inland "port" that often prospered or turned a town into a city.[19]
A mortar mounted on a railroad car used during the Civil War, 1865.
Rail was strategic during the American Civil War, and the Union used its much larger system much more effectively. Practically all the mills and factories supplying rails and equipment were in the North, and the Union blockade kept the South from getting new equipment or spare parts. The war was fought in the South, and Union raiders (and sometimes Confederates too) systematically destroyed bridges and rolling stock — and sometimes bent rails — to hinder the logistics of the enemy.[20]
In the South, most railroads in 1860 were local affairs connecting cotton regions with the nearest waterway. Most transports was by boat, not rail, and after the Union blockaded the ports in 1861 and seized the key rivers in 1862, long-distance travel was difficult. The outbreak of war had a depressing effect on the economic fortunes of the railroad companies, for the hoarding of the cotton crop in an attempt to force European intervention left railroads bereft of their main source of income.[21] Many had to lay off employees, and in particular, let go skilled technicians and engineers. For the early years of the war, the Confederate government had a hands-off approach to the railroads. Only in mid-1863 did the Confederate government initiate an overall policy, and it was confined solely to aiding the war effort.[22] With the legislation of impressment the same year, railroads and their rolling stock came under the de facto control of the Confederate military.
Conditions deteriorated rapidly in the Confederacy, as there was no new equipment and raids on both sides systematically destroyed key bridges, as well as locomotives and freight cars. Spare parts were cannibalized; feeder lines were torn up to get replacement rails for trunk lines, and the heavy use of rolling stock wore them out.[23] In 1864–65 the Confederate railroad network collapsed; little traffic moved in 1865.
Ceremony for the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad, May 1869, at Promontory Summit, U.T.
The Southern states had blocked westward rail expansion before 1860, but after secession the Pacific Railway Acts were passed in 1862[24] and 1863, which respectively established the central Pacific route and the standard gauge to be used. With federal financing in the form of bonds and generous land grants and with the heroic help of the mainly Chinese and Irish laborers, Central Pacific Railroad working eastward and Union Pacific Railroad working westward combined to complete in 1869 the major breakthrough First Transcontinental Railroad, which linked by rail the eastern states with the Pacific coast and made possible moving from New York to San Francisco Bay in only six days. In addition, other transcontinentals were built in the South (Southern Pacific, Santa Fe) and in the North along the Canada–US border (Northern Pacific, Great Northern), accelerating the settlement of the West by offering inexpensive farms and ranches on credit, carrying pioneers and supplies westward, and cattle, wheat and minerals eastward. In 1860 before the transcontinentals, railroads carried less than half as much freight as inland waterways, whereas by 1890 railroads carried five times as much freight as waterways.
Strikers in Baltimore confronting the Maryland National Guard, July 1877.
During the Reconstruction era, Northern money financed the rebuilding and dramatic expansion of railroads throughout the South; they were modernized in terms of track gauge, equipment and standards of service. The Southern network expanded from 11,000 miles (17,700km) in 1870 to 29,000 miles (46,700km) in 1890. The lines were owned and directed overwhelmingly by Northerners. Railroads helped create a mechanically skilled group of craftsmen and broke the isolation of much of the region. Passengers were few, however, and apart from hauling the cotton crop when it was harvested, there was little freight traffic.[25][26][27]
The Panic of 1873 was a major global economic depression which ended rapid rail expansion in the United States. Many lines went bankrupt or were barely able to pay the interest on their bonds, and workers were laid off on a mass scale, with those still employed subject to large cuts in wages. This worsening situation for railroad workers led to strikes against many railroads, culminating in the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
The Great Strike began on July 14 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in response to the cutting of wages for the second time in a year by the B&O Railroad. The strike, and related violence, spread to Cumberland, Maryland, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Chicago and the Midwest. The strike lasted for 45 days, and ended only with the intervention of local and state militias, and federal troops.[28]:112[29][30] Labor unrest continued into the 1880s, such as the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886, which involved over 200,000 workers.
Expansion and consolidation (1878–1916)
J.P. Morgan.1879 cartoon depicting William Henry Vanderbilt as "The Modern Colossus of (Rail) Roads."
By 1880 the nation had 17,800 freight locomotives carrying 23,600 tons of freight, and 22,200 passenger locomotives. The U.S. railroad industry was the nation's largest employer outside of the agricultural sector.[31] The effects of the American railways on rapid industrial growth were many, including the opening of hundreds of millions of acres of very good farm land ready for mechanization, lower costs for food and all goods, a huge national sales market, the creation of a culture of engineering excellence, and the creation of the modern system of management.[32][33]
New York financier J.P. Morgan played an increasingly dominant role in consolidating the rail system in the late 19th century. He orchestrated reorganizations and consolidations in all parts of the United States. Morgan raised large sums in Europe, but instead of only handling the funds, he helped the railroads reorganize and achieve greater efficiencies. He fought against the speculators interested in speculative profits, and built a vision of an integrated transportation system. In 1885, he reorganized the New York, West Shore & Buffalo Railroad, leasing it to the New York Central. In 1886, he reorganized the Philadelphia & Reading, and in 1888 the Chesapeake & Ohio. He was heavily involved with railroad tycoon James J. Hill and the Great Northern Railway.[34]:331–2
Morgan set up conferences in 1889 and 1890 that brought together railroad presidents in order to help the industry follow the new laws and write agreements for the maintenance of "public, reasonable, uniform and stable rates." The conferences were the first of their kind, and by creating a community of interest among competing lines paved the way for the great consolidations of the early 20th century.[34]:352–96 Congress responded by enacting antitrust legislation to prohibit monopolies of railroads (and other industries), beginning with the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890.[36]
The Panic of 1893 was the largest economic depression in U.S. history at that time. It was the result of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing, which set off a series of bank failures. One-quarter of U.S. railroads had failed by mid-1894, representing over 40,000 miles (64,000km). The failed lines included the Northern Pacific Railway, the Union Pacific Railroad and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. Acquisitions of the bankrupt companies led to further consolidation of ownership. As of 1906, two-thirds of the rail mileage in the U.S. was controlled by seven entities, with the New York Central, Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), and Morgan having the largest portions.[28]:125–6
James J. Hill joined forces with Morgan and others to gain control of the Northern Pacific. Hill formed the Northern Securities Company to consolidate the operations of the Northern Pacific with Hill's own Great Northern, but President Theodore Roosevelt, a trust-buster, strongly disapproved and took it to court. In 1904 the federal courts dissolved the Northern Security company (see Northern Securities Co. v. United States) and the railroads had to go their separate, competitive ways. By that time Morgan and Hill had ensured the Northern Pacific was well-organized and able to survive easily on its own.[34]:352–96
In 1901 the Union Pacific Railroad acquired all of the stock of the Southern Pacific. The federal government charged UP with violating the Sherman Act, and in 1913 the Supreme Court ordered UP to divest itself of all SP stock.[37] This ruling was received with considerable alarm throughout the industry, as UP and SP were widely considered at that time not to be significant competitors.[38] (Later in the 20th century, with different economic conditions and changes in the law, UP successfully acquired the SP. SeeResurgence of freight railroads.)
Continuing concern over rate discrimination by railroads led Congress to enact additional laws, giving increased regulatory powers to the ICC. The 1906 Hepburn Act gave the ICC authority to set maximum rates and review the companies' financial records.[39]
US railroads were at their peak length of trackage in 1916 with 254,037 miles of tracks.[40]
Nationalized management (1917–1920)
The United States Railroad Administration (USRA) temporarily took over management of railroads during World War I to address inadequacy in critical facilities throughout the overall system, such as terminals, trackage, and rolling stock. President Woodrow Wilson issued an order for nationalization on December 26, 1917.[41] Management by USRA led to standardization of equipment, reductions of duplicative passenger services, and better coordination of freight traffic.[28]:175 Federal control of the railroads ended in March 1920.[42]
Railroads in the early automobile era (1921–1945)
In the early 20th century, some members of Congress, the ICC, and some railroad executives developed concerns about inefficiencies in the American railroad system. Memories of the 1893 panic, the continuing proliferation of railroad companies, and duplicative facilities, fueled this concern. To an extent, the need to nationalize the system during the war was an example of this inefficiency. These concerns were the impetus for legislation to consider improvements to the system.[43] The 1920 Esch-Cummins Act directed the ICC to prepare and adopt a plan for the consolidation of the railroad companies into a limited number of systems.[42] In 1929 the ICC published its proposed Complete Plan of Consolidation, also known as the "Ripley Plan," after its author, William Z. Ripley of Harvard University.[44][45] The agency held hearings on the plan, but none of the proposed consolidations was ever implemented. Many small railroads failed during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Of those lines that survived, the stronger ones were not interested in supporting the weaker ones.[46] In 1940 Congress formally abandoned the Ripley Plan.[47]
Modern era (1946–present)
Lines to be taken over by Conrail in 1976 (in the event, Conrail took over EL and RDG as well)
During the post-World War II boom many railroads were driven out of business due to competition from airlines and Interstate highways. The rise of the automobile led to the end of passenger train service on most railroads. Trucking businesses had become major competitors by the 1930s with the advent of improved paved roads, and after the war they expanded their operations as the Interstate highway network grew, and acquired increased market share of freight business.[28]:219 Railroads continued to carry bulk freight such as coal, steel and other commodities. However, the ICC continued to regulate railroad rates and other aspects of railroad operations, which limited railroads' flexibility in responding to changing market forces.
In 1966, Congress created the Federal Railroad Administration, to issue and enforce rail safety regulations, administer railroad assistance programs, and conduct research and development in support of improved railroad safety and national rail transportation policy. The safety functions were transferred from the ICC. The FRA was established as part of the new federal Department of Transportation.[48]
In 1970 Congress created a government corporation, Amtrak, to take over operation of Penn Central passenger lines and selected inter-city passenger services from other private railroads, under the Rail Passenger Service Act.[28]:234[49] Amtrak began operations in 1971.[50]
Congress passed the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 (sometimes called the "3R Act") to salvage viable freight operations from the bankrupt Penn Central and other lines in the northeast, mid-Atlantic and midwestern regions, through the creation of the Consolidated Rail Corporation (ConRail), a government-owned corporation.[51] Conrail began operations in 1976.[52] The 3R Act also formed the United States Railway Association, another government corporation, taking over the powers of the ICC with respect to allowing the bankrupt railroads to abandon unprofitable lines.
In addition to freight railroads, Conrail inherited commuter rail operations from several predecessor railroads in the northeast, and these operations continued to be unprofitable. State and local government transportation agencies took over the passenger operations and acquired the various rights-of-way from Conrail in 1983.[52][53]
Beginning in the late 1970s Amtrak eliminated several of its lightly-traveled lines. Ridership stagnated at roughly 20 million passengers per year amid uncertain government aid from 1981 to about 2000.[54][55] Ridership increased during the first decade of the 21st century after implementation of capital improvements in the Northeast Corridor and rises in automobile fuel costs.
In 1980 Congress enacted the Staggers Rail Act to revive freight traffic, by removing restrictive regulations and enabling railroads to be more competitive with the trucking industry.[56] The Northeast Rail Service Act of 1981 authorized additional deregulation of northeast railroads.[57] Among other things, these laws reduced the role of the ICC in regulating the railroads and allowed the carriers to discontinue unprofitable routes. More railroad companies merged and consolidated their lines in order to remain successful. These changes led to the current system of fewer, but profitable, Class I railroads covering larger regions of the United States.[28]:245–252
Since the beginning of the current deregulatory era, the following Class I railroads have been involved in mergers:
In 1995, when most of the ICC's powers had been eliminated, Congress finally abolished the agency and transferred its remaining functions to a new agency, the Surface Transportation Board.[58]
21st century
In the early 21st century, several of the railroads, along with the federal government and various port agencies, began to reinvest in freight rail infrastructure, such as intermodal terminals and bridge and tunnel improvements. These projects are designed to increase capacity and efficiency across the national rail network.[59][60]SeeHeartland Corridor and National Gateway.
Both the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations had announced plans for new high-speed rail lines in their first terms. In the case of Clinton era, the only tangible outcome was the introduction of Amtrak's Acela Express, serving the Northeast Corridor, in 2000. Obama even mentioned his rail plans in his State of the Union address, the first time in decades a President had done so. While several small scale improvements to rail lines were financed by federal money, more ambitious plans in Florida, Ohio and other states failed when newly elected Republican governors stopped existing high-speed rail plans and returned federal funding.[citation needed]
In 2015 construction began on the California High-Speed Rail line. The Phase I portion linking Los Angeles and San Francisco in under three hours was originally projected to be completed in 2029.[61] However, with numerous delays and cost miscalculations, the California High-Speed Rail line is now projected to be completed in 2033.[62] Originally projected to cost $40 billion, the latest projections have the California High-Speed Rail line costing as much as $98.1 billion; it is currently under an audit that could expose more management and cost issues when findings are released later in 2018.[62]
The B&O established its Mount Clare Shops in Baltimore in 1829. This was the first railroad manufacturing facility in the U.S., and the company built locomotives, railroad cars, iron bridges and other equipment there.[7]:208 Following the B&O example, U.S. railroad companies soon became self-sufficient, as thousands of domestic machine shops turned out products and thousands of inventors and tinkerers improved the equipment.
Rail manufacturing
In general, U.S. railroad companies imported technology from Britain in the 1830s, particularly strap iron rails, as there were no rail manufacturing facilities in the United States at that time. Heavy iron "T" rails were first manufactured in the U.S. in the mid-1840s at Mount Savage, Maryland[63] and Danville, Pennsylvania.[64] This improved rail design permitted higher train speeds and more reliable operation. Discovery of high-quality iron ores in the mid-19th century, particularly in the Great Lakes region, led to the fabrication of better-quality rails.[65][66]
Steel rails began to replace iron later in the 19th century. Several railroads imported steel rails from England in the 1860s, and the first commercially available steel rails in the U.S. were manufactured in 1867 at the Cambria Iron Works in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. By the mid-1880s U.S. railroads were using more steel rails than iron in building new or replacement tracks.[67]
Through the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, not only local projects, but long-distance links, were completed, so that by 1860 the eastern half of the continent, especially the Northeast, was linked by a network of connecting railroads. However, although England had early adopted a standard gauge of 4ft81⁄2in (1,435mm), once Americans started building locomotives, they experimented with different gauges, resulting in the standard gauge, or a close approximation, being adopted in the Northeast and Midwest U.S., but a 5ft (1,524mm) gauge in the South, and a 5ft6in (1,676mm) gauge in Canada. In addition, the Erie Railway was built to 6ft (1,829mm)broad gauge, and in the 1870s a widespread movement looked at the cheaper 3ft (914mm)narrow gauge.
EMD F-unit locomotives were widely used in the early years of dieselisation
In the early years American railroads imported many steam locomotives from England. While the B&O and the PRR built many of their own steam locomotives, other railroads purchased from independent American manufacturers. Prominent among the early steam manufacturers were Norris, Baldwin and Rogers,[69] followed by Lima and Alco later in the 19th and 20th centuries.[70]
Diesel locomotives were first developed in Europe after World War I, and U.S. railroads began to use them widely in the 1930s and 1940s. Most U.S. roads discontinued use of steam locomotives by the 1950s. A diesel engine was expensive to build, but was less complex and easier to maintain than a steam locomotive, and required only one person to operate. This meant reduced costs and greater reliability for the railroads.[28]:213–14 Several companies developed fast streamliner trains, such as the Super Chief and the California Zephyr during the 1930s and 1940s. Their locomotives used either diesel or similar internal combustion engine designs. SeeDieselisation in North America.
Though electric railways expanded in Europe, they never reached the same popularity in North America. They were built primarily in the north-west and the north-east beginning in the late 19th century. While some railroads used electric locomotives for both freight and passenger trains, by the end of the 20th century most freight trains were pulled only by diesel locomotives. The Northeast Corridor, the most heavily traveled passenger line in the US, is one of few long lines currently operating with electrification. SeeRailroad electrification in the United States.
Signalling and communications
Hall disc signals were used in block signal systems beginning in the 1870s.
Early forms of American railroad signaling and communication were virtually non-existent. Before telegraphs, the American railroads initially managed their train operations using timetables. However, there were no means of communication between drivers and dispatchers, and occasionally, two trains were sent on a collision course, or "cornfield meets."[71] With the advent of the telegraph in the 1840s, a more sophisticated system was developed that allowed the dissemination of alterations to the timetable, known as train orders. These orders overrode the timetable, allowing the cancellation, rescheduling and addition of trains. The earliest recorded use of train orders was by the Erie Railroad in 1851.[72]
The development of the electrical track circuit in the 1870s led to the use of systems off block signals, which improved the railroads' speed, safety and efficiency. Mechanical interlockings, which prevent conflicting movements at rail junctions and crossings, were also introduced in the U.S. in the 1870s, after their initial development in Britain.[73]
Labor relations and worker safety
Railways changed employment practices in many ways. Lines with hundreds or thousands of employees developed systematic rules and procedures, not only for running the equipment but in hiring, promoting, paying and supervising employees. The railway system of management was adopted by all major business sectors. Railways offered a new type of work experience in enterprises vastly larger in size, complexity and management. At first workers were recruited from occupations where skills were roughly analogous and transferable, that is, workshop mechanics from the iron, machine and building trades; conductors from stagecoach drivers, steamship stewards and mail boat captains; station masters from commerce and commission agencies; and clerks from government offices.[74]
In response to the strikes of the 1870s and 1880s, Congress passed the Arbitration Act of 1888, which authorized the creation of arbitration panels with the power to investigate the causes of labor disputes and to issue non-binding arbitration awards.[75] The Act was a complete failure: only one panel was ever convened under the Act, and that one, in the case of the 1894 Pullman Strike, issued its report only after the strike had been crushed by a federal courtinjunction backed by federal troops.
Congress attempted to correct these shortcomings in the Erdman Act, passed in 1898.[76] This law likewise provided for voluntary arbitration, but made any award issued by the panel binding and enforceable in federal court. It also outlawed discrimination against employees for union activities, prohibited "yellow dog" contracts (employee agrees not to join a union while employed), and required both sides to maintain the status quo during any arbitration proceedings and for three months after an award was issued. The arbitration procedures were rarely used. A successor statute, the Newlands Act, was passed in 1913 and proved more effective,[77] but was largely superseded when the federal government nationalized the railroads in 1917.
As railroads expanded after the Civil War, so too did the rate of accidents among railroad personnel, especially brakemen. Many accidents were associated with the coupling and uncoupling of railroad cars, and the operation of manually operated brakes (hand brakes). The rise in accidents led to calls for safety legislation, as early as the 1870s.[78]:2–4 In the 1880s, the number of on-the-job fatalities of railroad workers was second only to those of coal miners.[78]:5 Through that decade, several state legislatures enacted safety laws. However, the specific requirements varied among the states, making implementation difficult for interstate rail carriers, and Congress passed the Safety Appliance Act in 1893 to provide a uniform standard.[78]:6–7[79] The law required railroads to install air brakes and automatic couplers on all trains, and led to a sharp drop in accidents.
The Esch–Cummins Act of 1920 terminated the nationalization program and created a Railway Labor Board (RLB) to regulate wages and issue non-binding proposals to settle disputes. In 1921 the RLB ordered a twelve percent reduction in employees' wages,[80] which led to the Great Railroad Strike of 1922, involving rail shop workers nationwide, followed by a court injunction to end the strike.[81] Congress passed the Railway Labor Act of 1926 to rectify the shortcomings of the RLB procedures.[82]
Congress added railroad worker safety laws throughout the 20th century.[78]:16–25 Significant among this legislation is the Federal Railroad Safety Act of 1970, which gave the FRA broad responsibilities over all aspects of rail safety, and expanded the agency's authority to cover all railroads, both interstate and intrastate.[83]
Impact on American economy and society
According to historian Henry Adams the system of railroads needed:
the energies of a generation, for it required all the new machinery to be created—capital, banks, mines, furnaces, shops, power-houses, technical knowledge, mechanical population, together with a steady remodelling of social and political habits, ideas, and institutions to fit the new scale and suit the new conditions. The generation between 1865 and 1895 was already mortgaged to the railways, and no one knew it better than the generation itself.[84]
The impact can be examined through five aspects: shipping, finance, management, careers, and popular reaction.[85]
Shipping freight and passengers
First they provided a highly efficient network for shipping freight and passengers across a large national market. The result was a transforming impact on most sectors of the economy including manufacturing, retail and wholesale, agriculture and finance. Supplemented with the Telegraph that added rapid communications, the United States now had an integrated national market practically the size of Europe, with no internal barriers or tariffs, all supported by a common language, and financial system and a common legal system. The railroads at first supplemented, then largely replaced the previous transportation modes of turnpikes and canals, rivers and intracoastal ocean traffic. For highly efficient Northern railroads played a major role in winning the Civil War, while the overburdened Southern lines collapsed in the face of an insurmountable challenge.[86] In the late 19th century pipelines were built for the oil trade, and in the 20th century trucking and aviation emerged.[87][88]
Basis of the private financial system
Railroads financing provided the basis of the private (non-governmental) financial system. Construction of railroads was far more expensive than factories or canals. The famous Erie canal, 300 miles long in upstate New York, cost $7 million of state money, which was about what private investors spent on one short railroad in Western Massachusetts. A new steamboat on the Hudson, Mississippi, Missouri, or Ohio rivers cost about the same as one mile of track.
In 1860, the combined total of railroad stocks and bonds was $1.8 billion; 1897 it reached $10.6 billion (compared to a total national debt of $1.2 billion).[89] Funding came from financiers throughout the Northeast, and from Europe, especially Britain.[90] The federal government provided no cash to any other railroads. However it did provide unoccupied free land to some of the Western railroads, so they could sell it to farmers and have customers along the route. Some cash came from states, or from local governments that use money as a leverage to prevent being bypassed by the main line. The larger sound came from the southern states during the Reconstruction era, as they try to rebuild their destroyed rail system. Some states such as Maine and Texas also made land grants to local railroads; the state total was 49 million acres.[91] The emerging American financial system was based on railroad bonds. Boston was the first center, but New York by 1860 was the dominant financial market. The British invested heavily in railroads around the world, but nowhere more so than the United States; The total came to about $3 billion by 1914.[92] In 1914–1917, they liquidated their American assets to pay for war supplies.[93][94][95]
Inventing modern management
The third dimension was in designing complex managerial systems that could handle far more complicated simultaneous relationships that could be dreamed of by the local factory owner who could patrol every part of his own factory in a matter of hours. Civil engineers became the senior management of railroads. The leading innovators were the Western Railroad of Massachusetts and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the 1840s, the Erie in the 1850s and the Pennsylvania in the 1860s.[96]
After a serious accident, the Western Railroad of Massachusetts put in place a system of responsibility for district managers and dispatchers to keep track of all train movements. Discipline was essential—everyone had to follow the rules exactly to prevent accidents. Decision-making powers had to be distributed to ensure safety and to juggle the complexity of numerous trains running in both directions on a single track, keeping to schedules that could easily be disrupted by weather mechanical breakdowns, washouts or hitting a wandering cow.[97] As the lines grew longer with more and more business originating at dozens of different stations, the Baltimore and Ohio set up more complex system that separated finances from daily operations. The Erie Railroad, faced with growing competition, had to make lower bids for freight movement, and had to know on a daily basis how much each train was costing them. Statistics was the weapon of choice. By the 1860s, the Pennsylvania Railroad—the largest in the world—was making further advances in using bureaucracy under John Edgar Thomson, president 1852–1874. He divided the system into several geographical divisions, which each reported daily to a general superintendent in Philadelphia. All the American railroads copied each other in the new managerial advances, and by the 1870s emerging big businesses in the industrial field likewise copied the railroad model.[98]
Career paths
The fourth dimension was in management of the workforce, both blue-collar workers and white-collar workers. Railroading became a career in which young men entered at about age 18 to 20, and spent their entire lives usually with the same line. Young men could start working on the tracks, become a fireman, and work his way up to the engineer. The mechanical world of the roundhouses have their own career tracks. A typical career path would see a young man hired at age 18 as a shop laborer, be promoted to skilled mechanic at age 24, brakeman at 25, freight conductor at 27, and passenger conductor at age 57. Women were not hired.[99]
White-collar careers paths likewise were delineated. Educated young men started in clerical or statistical work and moved up to station agents or bureaucrats at the divisional or central headquarters. At each level, they had more and more knowledge experience and human capital. They were very hard to replace, and were virtually guaranteed permanent jobs and provided with insurance and medical care. Hiring, firing and wage rates were set not by the foreman, but by central administrators, in order to minimize favoritism and personality conflicts. Everything was by the book, and increasingly complex set of rules told everyone exactly what they should do it every circumstance, and exactly what their rank and pay would be.[100] Young men who were first hired in the 1840s and 1850s retired from the same railroad 40 or 50 years later. To discourage them from leaving for another company, they were promised pensions when they retired. Indeed, the railroads invented the American pension system.[101]
Love–hate relationship with the railroads
America developed a love-hate relationship with railroads. Boosters in every city worked feverishly to make sure the railroad came through, knowing their urban dreams depended upon it. The mechanical size, scope and efficiency of the railroads made a profound impression; people would dress in their Sunday best to go down to the terminal to watch the train come in. David Nye argues that:
The startling introduction of railroads into this agricultural society provoked a discussion that soon arrived at the enthusiastic consensus that railways were sublime and that they would help to unify, dignify, expand and enrich the nation. They became part of the public celebrations of Republicanism. The rhetoric, the form, and the central figures of civic ceremonies changed to accommodate the intrusion of this technology....[Between 1828 and 1869] Americans integrated the railroad into the national economy and enfolded it within the sublime.[102]
Travel became much easier, cheaper and more common. Shoppers from small towns could make day trips to big city stores. Hotels, resorts and tourist attractions were built to accommodate the demand. The realization that anyone could buy a ticket for a thousand-mile trip was empowering. Historians Gary Cross and Rick Szostak argue:
with the freedom to travel came a greater sense of national identity and a reduction in regional cultural diversity. Farm children could more easily acquaint themselves with the big city, and easterners could readily visit the West. It is hard to imagine the United States of continental proportions without the railroad.[103]
The engineers became model citizens, bringing their can-do spirit and their systematic work effort to all phases of the economy as well as local and national government.[104] By 1910, major cities were building magnificent palatial railroad stations, such as the Pennsylvania Station in New York City, and the Union Station in Washington DC.[105]
But there was also a dark side. As early as the 1830s, novelists and poets began fretting that the railroads would destroy the rustic attractions of the American landscape. By the 1840s concerns were rising about terrible accidents when speeding trains crashed into helpless wooden carriages.[106] By the 1870s, railroads were vilified by Western farmers who absorbed the Granger movement theme that monopolistic carriers controlled too much pricing power, and that the state legislatures had to impose maximum prices. Local merchants and shippers supported the demand and got some "Granger Laws" passed.[107] Anti-railroad complaints were loudly repeated in late 19th century political rhetoric.[108] The idea of establishing a strong rate fixing federal body was achieved during the Progressive Era, primarily by a coalition of shipping interests.[109] Railroad historians mark the Hepburn Act of 1906 that gave the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) the power to set maximum railroad rates as a damaging blow to the long-term profitability and growth of railroads.[110] After 1910 the lines faced an emerging trucking industry to compete with for freight, and automobiles and buses to compete for passenger service.[111]
Environmental history of railways
Railways also disrupted the natural tendencies of the environment through an increased capacity for transportation. Railroads throughout the United States allowed quicker, more efficient transport of goods and people that were previously unavailable. Agriculture, animals, soldiers, goods, and natural resources were now able to move large distances in much shorter amounts of time. As a result, things that were not harvested before like certain tracts of arable land or animal populations were now being used.
Galena and Chicago Union Railroad
A current map showing Chicago, Galena, and St. Louis.
The Galena and Chicago Union Railroad was the first railway to be built from Chicago. It never reached Galena, Illinois, but it reached Clinton, Iowa, and Freeport, Illinois. This railroad marked the beginning of Chicago's economic dominance in the Midwest though transportation of goods such as agriculture and bison hides. Railroads affected the American environment by opening up unexplored, immense tracts of the American wilderness for settlement commercialization.[112]
The idea behind a railroad to Chicago was to steal Midwestern agricultural business from St. Louis, Missouri and Madison, Wisconsin. The area around Chicago was ideal for a railroad because it was flat and grassy. Citizens of Chicago believed they could use their environment for commercial gain by actually buying goods grown from the land as well as increasing the value the value of adjacent land neighboring the railroad. The Galena and Chicago Union railroad underwent construction in March 1848 to have the railroad run through Chicago, a booming Midwest town. In order to fund this, local Illinoisans pledged together to build a railway because of the potential economic prosperity. William Cronon writes, ”By the following April [1849], over twelve hundred people had pledged to buy stock hypothetically valued at about $350,000, though they had paid only about $20,000 in actual cash.” Farmers were enamored with the idea of a railroad because transporting crops and goods became much easier and more effective than traveling on dirt roads that could easily become muddy or impassable, so they pledged a lot of their money towards the venture. The process of local funding was stock installments.[113]
By 1852, the Galena and Chicago Union railroad supplied Chicago over half of its wheat. This statistic changed the way people thought about the environment and its railways because railways through the countryside provided Chicagoans with increased wealth; railways became a symbol of mastery over land by being able to transport anything across terrain. This mastery coupled with an aligning of railroads with prosperity and wealth changed the way Chicagoans saw railways. It was a beacon of hope and deliverer of goods.[113]
Impact of railroads on buffalo population
A buffalo hide yard in Dodge City, Kansas, in 1878.Willam Hornaday, a leading conservationist of the 19th century.
During the first half of the 19th century, herds of buffalo were plentiful throughout the Midwestern states of America, but the American people through Manifest Destiny drastically changed the American landscape. Before the Civil War, 8 million buffalo roamed free, but only 4–6 million remained after the war because their hides had become valuable throughout the country and domestic horses and cattle had begun to occupy the same space and graze the same land as the bison. William Hornaday, an influential zoologist and student of the American bison, wrote, "as soon as the railways crossed the buffalo country, the slaughter began." Railroads gave rise to the consumption of buffalo because hunters and businessmen could transport parts of the buffalo to distant parts of the country where demand was high. Before, it was not plausible to commercialize the buffalo because the hide, meat, and bones since it would take so much longer to get to their destination. Since railroads made transportation much quicker, it was now plausible for people to make money off the seemingly endless resource in the plains of the Midwest: the buffalo. So extreme was the mass hunting of buffalo thanks to the new railroads that wolves could not consume all of the carcasses that were left behind by hunters. There were so many rotting, pungent, bison corpses that nature's scavengers did not have enough manpower to consume.[114]
Through this massacre, however, the landscape did affect man in an economic way through the creation of jobs.[115] Many men acquired jobs hunting and skinning bison on the plains as well as maintaining railroads and boxcars that carried these valuable bison hides. At the end of the line, men were required to sell the bison when they had finally reached their destination. Through manipulating the environment, the American people were able to subjugate nature to their will to make a profit.
Railroads in popular culture
In 1967 Gordon Lightfoot, a Canadian folk singer, released a song called, "Canadian Railway Trilogy" which documents the way he sees nature and how nature has changed because of increasing railways going through North America. He describes the pristine wilderness "long before the white man and long before the wheel" and before pioneers started to build mines, mills, and factories in the verdant land. Because of the optimism for wealth and adventure, Lightfoot claims, "The railroad men grew restless for to hear the hammers ring." He also describes the cost this industry had on nature by penning the line, "Open her heart let the life blood flow." He describes nature's heart as being bled by the workers' dreams, which could not be stopped, "Into the muskeg and into the rain." Because man wants to be in control of nature and conquer it, he wants to be able to say,
"On the mountain tops we stand
All the world at our command
We have opened up the soil
With our teardrops and our toil"
Through hard work technology, pioneers and businessmen adapted the environment for their own commercial needs and quest for power.[116]
Historiography
There is no question about the importance of railroads in American history. Churella finds that back in the 1950s business and economic historians, led by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and Robert Fogel, made railroads the centerpiece of advanced historiography.[117] That era has passed as graduate programs have faded away, courses on railroad history do not make the curriculum, and the historiography has shifted away from professional historian to the "railfans"—very well informed amateur writers fascinated by the memorabilia, technology and locomotives of the steam era. Looking at the voluminous output of railfan authors, Klein says:
The vast bulk of this work is devoted to minute descriptions of power, rolling stock, obscure short lines, and technical subjects.... But few address the larger questions of railroad history or place their topic in broader contexts.[118][119]
The result is a multiplicity of histories of specific railroads, large and small. Typically they deal with standard topics: the builders and their organizational, legislative and financial dealings; colorful construction crews laying down wood ties and steel rail; the development of locomotives and passenger cars; boosters who sought a stop in their little town else it would die; the 1880–1920 golden age of the passenger long-distance travel and local excursions; the steady erosion of passenger service during the automobile age; the freight agent and the small-town depot. They end with the more recent saga of retrenchment, merger, and abandonment.[120][121] Klein, Churella, Roth, and Franham all find that the popular writers show little interest in the development of managerial and organizational complexity of the sort that Chandler studied, or the economic impact that concerned Fogel's cohort.[122] From outside the field of railroad history, academic labor historians now deal with the culture of the workers, strikes, the careers for blue collar and white collar men, and racial discrimination. Academic political historians deal with the Granger, Populist and Progressive attacks, and in federal or state regulation.[120]
Appendix: Railroad active mileage by region
Source: United States Census Bureau, Report on Transportation Business in the United States at the Eleventh Census 1890, pg. 4.
Railroad Active Mileage by Region
Region
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
New England (ME, NH, VT, MA, RI, CT)
30
513
2,596
3,644
43,273
5,888
6,718
East (NY, PA, OH, MI, IN, MD, DE, NJ, DC)
1,484
3,740
11,927
18,292
28,155
40,826
South (VA, WV, KY, TN, MS, AL, GA, FL, NC, SC)
10
737
2,082
7,908
10,610
14,458
27,833
Midwest (IL, IA, WI, MO, MN)
46
4,951
11,031
22,213
35,580
South Central (LA, AR, OK/Indian Territory)
21
107
250
331
1,621
5,154
West (ND, SD, NM, WY, MT, ID, UT, TX, AZ, NE, KS, TX, CO, CA, NV, OR, WA)
Bryant, Keith L., ed. Railroads in the Age of Regulation, 1900–1980 (1988); part of Encyclopedia of American business history and biography; 500+ pages each with coverage of entrepreneurs, corporations, and technologies, Plus specialized bibliographies
Frey, Robert L., ed. Railroads in the Nineteenth Century (1988); part of Encyclopedia of American business history and biography; 500+ Pages each with coverage of entrepreneurs, corporations, and technologies, Plus specialized bibliographies
Hayes, Derek. Historical atlas of the North American railroad (2010); 400 historical maps
Hubbard, Freeman H. (1981). Encyclopedia of North American railroading: 150 years of railroading in the United States and Canada. (New York: McGraw-Hill). ISBN9780070308282.
Riley, C. J. The Encyclopedia of Trains & Locomotives (2002)
Stover, John. The Routledge Historical Atlas of the American Railroads (2001)
Scholarly studies
Callen, Zachary. Railroads and American Political Development: Infrastructure, Federalism, and State Building (UP of Kansas, 2016) xii, 257 pp.
Chandler, Alfred D., ed. The Railroads: The Nation's First Big Business – Sources and Readings. (1981).
Chandler, Alfred D. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. (1977).
Churella, Albert J. (2013), The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume 1: Building an Empire, 1846–1917, University of Pennsylvania Press, JSTORj.ctt3fhn2k
Deverell, William (1994). Railroad Crossing: Californians and the Railroad, 1850–1910. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). ISBN9780520205055.
Ducker, James H. (1982). Men of the steel rails: Workers on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, 1869–1900.
Gallamore, Robert E.; Meyer, John R. (2014). American Railroads: Decline and Renaissance in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN9780674725645.
Jenks, Leland H. (1944). "Railroads as an Economic Force in American Development," The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 4, No. 1 (May, 1944), 1–20. JSTOR2113700.
Kirkland, Edward Chase (1948). Men, Cities and Transportation, A Study of New England History 1820–1900. (2 vol.) Harvard University Press.
Klein, Maury (1997). The Life and Legend of Jay Gould Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN9780801857713.
Klein, Maury (2000). The Life & Legend of E. H. Harriman (2000) University of North Carolina Press. ISBN0-8078-2517-4. Online edition.
Marrs, Aaron W. Railroads in the Old South: Pursuing Progress in a Slave Society (2009) excerpt and text search
Martin, Albro. James J. Hill and the Opening of the Northwest (1990) excerpt and text search
Martin, Albro. Railroads Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection, and Rebirth of a Vital American Force (1992) excerpt and text search; wide-ranging overview
Meyer, B.H. and Caroline E. MacGill. History of Transportation in the United States before 1860 (1917). pp 366–72 online; 698pp; Encyclopedic coverage; railroads by state pp 319–550; Google edition
Middleton, William D. ed. (2007). Encyclopedia of North American Railroads. Indiana University Press. ISBN9780253349163.
Miner, Craig. A Most Magnificent Machine: America Adopts the Railroad, 1825–1862 (University Press of Kansas; 2010) 325 pages; Documents the enthusiasm that accompanied the advent of the railroad system
Nice, David C. Amtrak: The History and Politics of a National Railroad (1998) online edition
Riegel, Robert Edgar. The Story of the Western Railroads 1926 online edition
Saunders, Richard. Main lines: Rebirth of the North American railroads, 1970–2002 (Northern Illinois University Press, 2003).
Stover, John. History of the Illinois Central Railroad (1975)
Stover, John. Iron Road to the West: American Railroads in the 1850s (1978)
Ward, James Arthur. J. Edgar Thomson: Master of the Pennsylvania (1980) 265 pages
Ward, James A. "Power and Accountability on the Pennsylvania Railroad, 1846–1878." Business History Review 1975 49(1): 37–59. in JSTOR
White, Richard. Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (2011) excerpt and text search
Wolmar, Christian. The Great Railroad Revolution: The History of Trains in America (2012), survey to 2012; emphasis on 19th century; 448pp excerpt and text search
Civil War
Bacon, Benjamin (1997) Sinews of War: How Technology, Industry and Transportation Won the Civil War. Novato: Presidio Press. ISBN0-89141-626-9.
Bailey, Joe R. "Union Lifeline in Tennessee: A Military History of the Nashville and Northwestern Railroad," Tennessee Historical Quarterly (2008) 67#2 pp.106–123 in JSTOR
Black III, Robert C. "Railroads in the Confederacy." Civil War History (1961) 7#3 pp: 231–238. online
Clark, John Elwood. Railroads in the Civil War: The Impact of Management on Victory and Defeat (LSU Press, 2001)
Cotterill, R. S. "The Louisville and Nashville Railroad 1861–1865," American Historical Review (1924) 29#4 pp.700–715 in JSTOR
Fish, Carl Russell. "The Northern Railroads, April, 1861," The American Historical Review, 22#4 (1917), pp.778–793 JSTOR1836240; old but still valuable
Fite, Emerson David. Social and industrial conditions in the North during the Civil War (1910) online edition, old but still quite useful
Gordon, Ralph C. "Hospital Trains of the Army of the Cumberland." Tennessee Historical Quarterly 51.3 (1992): 147+
Lash, Jeffrey N. "Joseph E. Johnston and the Virginia Railways, 1861–62." Civil War History 35.1 (1989): 5–27. online
Lash, Jeffrey N. Destroyer of the Iron Horse: General Joseph E. Johnston and Confederate Rail Transport. 1861–65 (1991).
Leignadier, Victoria A. "Railroads in the Civil War: A Strategic Perspective' (Army War College 2001) online.
Lord, Francis Alfred. Lincoln's railroad man: Herman Haupt (1969).
Hodges, Robert R. Jr. (2009) American Civil War Railroad Tactics. Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing. ISBN978-1-84603-452-7.
McGuire, Peter S. "The Railroads of Georgia, 1860–1880." The Georgia Historical Quarterly (1932): 179–213. in JSTOR
Pickenpaugh, Roger. Rescue by Rail: Troop Transfer and the Civil War in the West, 1863 (1998)
Ramsdell, Charles W. "The Confederate Government and the Railroads" The American Historical Review (1917) 22#4 in JSTOR
Riegel, R.E. "Federal Operation of Southern Railroads during the Civil War." Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1922) 9#2 in JSTOR
Summers, Festus P. Baltimore and Ohio in the Civil War. (1939). ISBN1-879664-13-5.
Sutton, Robert M. The Illinois Central Railroad in peace and war, 1858–1868 (1948).
Turner, George E. Victory Rode the Rails: The Strategic Place of the Railroads in the Civil War (1953), an often-cited survey
Weber, Thomas. The Northern Railroads in the Civil War, 1861–1865 (1999) online
Old studies
Clarke, Thomas Curtis (1889). The American Railway: Its Construction, Development, Management, and Appliances (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons). 456 pp. online
Davis, John Patterson (1894). Union Pacific Railway: A Study in Railway Politics, History, and Economics. (Chicago: S. C. Griggs and Company). 247 pp. online
Moody, John. The Railroad Builders: A Chronicle of the Welding of the States (1919) online edition; popular history
Raper, Charles Lee. and Arthur Twining Hadley. Railway Transportation: A History of Its Economics and of Its Relation to the State, (1912) 331 pages; complete online at Google
Historiography
Churella, Albert J. "Company, State, and Region: Three Approaches to Railroad History," Enterprise & Society (2006) 7#3, pp.581–591
Klein, Maury. "The Unfinished Business: of American Railroad History," in Klein, Unfinished Business: The Railroad in American Life (1994) pp 166–86
Video
Railroads in U.S. History (1830–2010) (2010), set of 4 DVDs, directed by Ron Meyer; #1, "Railroads come to America (1830–1840);" #2, "The First Great Railroad Boom (1841– 1860)"; #3, "A New Era in American Railroading (1861–1870)," #4, "The Second Great Railroad Boom (1871–2010)" further information
Related Research Articles
A narrow-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard 1,435 mm. Most narrow-gauge railways are between 600 mm and 1,067 mm.
Rail transport is a means of transferring of passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, also known as tracks. It is also commonly referred to as train transport. In contrast to road transport, where vehicles run on a prepared flat surface, rail vehicles are directionally guided by the tracks on which they run. Tracks usually consist of steel rails, installed on ties (sleepers) set in ballast, on which the rolling stock, usually fitted with metal wheels, moves. Other variations are also possible, such as slab track. This is where the rails are fastened to a concrete foundation resting on a prepared subsurface.
A transcontinental railroad is a contiguous network of railroad trackage that crosses a continental land mass with terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks can be via the tracks of either a single railroad, or over those owned or controlled by multiple railway companies along a continuous route. Although Europe is crisscrossed by railways, the railroads within Europe are usually not considered transcontinental, with the possible exception of the historic Orient Express. Transcontinental railroads helped open up unpopulated interior regions of continents to exploration and settlement that would not otherwise have been feasible. In many cases they also formed the backbones of cross-country passenger and freight transportation networks.
Union Pacific Railroad is a freight hauling railroad that operates 8,500 locomotives over 32,100 route-miles in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. The Union Pacific Railroad system is the second largest in the United States after the BNSF Railway and is one of the world's largest transportation companies. The Union Pacific Railroad is the principal operating company of the Union Pacific Corporation ; both are headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska.
The Timeline of U.S.A Railway History depends upon the definition of a railway, as follows: A means of conveyance of passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, also known as tracks.
In rail transport, track gauge or track gage is the spacing of the rails on a railway track and is measured between the inner faces of the load-bearing rails.
The Pennsylvania Railroad was an American Class I railroad that was established in 1846 and was headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was so named because it was established in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
The New York Central Railroad was a railroad primarily operating in the Great Lakes region of the United States. The railroad primarily connected greater New York and Boston in the east with Chicago and St. Louis in the Midwest along with the intermediate cities of Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Detroit. New York Central was headquartered in New York City's New York Central Building, adjacent to its largest station, Grand Central Terminal.
The Panama Canal Railway is a railway line linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean in Central America. The route stretches 47.6 miles (76.6 km) across the Isthmus of Panama from Colón (Atlantic) to Balboa. Because of the difficult physical conditions of the route and state of technology, the construction was renowned as an international engineering achievement, one that cost US$8 million and the lives of an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 workers. Opened in 1855, the railway preceded the Panama Canal by half a century; the ship canal was later constructed parallel to the railway.
The United States Railroad Administration (USRA) was the name of the nationalized railroad system of the United States between December 28, 1917, and March 1st, 1920. It was possibly the largest American experiment with nationalization, and was undertaken against a background of war emergency.
The Grand Trunk Western Railroad Company is an American subsidiary of the Canadian National Railway operating in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Since a corporate restructuring in 1971 the railroad has been under CN's subsidiary holding company the Grand Trunk Corporation. Grand Trunk Western's routes are part of CN's Michigan Division. Its primary mainline between Chicago, Illinois, and Port Huron, Michigan, serves as a connection between railroad interchanges in Chicago and rail lines in eastern Canada and the Northeastern United States. The railroad's extensive trackage in Detroit and across southern Michigan has made it an essential link for the automotive industry as a hauler of parts and automobiles from manufacturing plants.
The Western & Atlantic Railroad of the State of Georgia (W&A) is a government-owned railroad and is currently leased by CSX, which CSX operates in the Southeastern United States from Atlanta, Georgia, to Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Rail transport in Victoria, Australia, is provided by a number of railway operators who operate over the government-owned railway lines. The network consists of Victorian broad gauge lines, and an increasing number of standard gauge freight and interstate lines; the latter brought into existence as a result of gauge conversion of the former. Historically, a few experimental 762 mm gauge lines were built, along with various private logging, mining and industrial railways.
Rail transportation in the United States consists primarily of freight shipments, while passenger service, once a large and vital part of the nation's passenger transportation network, plays a limited role as compared to transportation patterns in many other countries.
The Atlanta and West Point Rail Road was a railroad in the U.S. state of Georgia, forming the east portion of the Atlanta-Selma West Point Route. The company was chartered in 1847 as the Atlanta and LaGrange Rail Road and renamed in 1857; construction of the 5 ft gauge line was begun in 1849-50 and completed in May 1854. A large minority interest owned by the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company eventually passed under the control of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL), which later acquired a majority of the stock.
Rail freight transport is the use of railroads and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers.
The Richmond and Petersburg Railroad moved passengers and goods between Richmond and Petersburg from 1838 to 1898. It survived the American Civil War and eventually merged into the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in 1900.
The Petersburg Railroad ran from Petersburg, Virginia, south to Garysburg, North Carolina, from which it ran to Weldon via trackage rights over the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad.
Originally, various gauges were used in the United States. Some railways, primarily in the northeast, used standard gauge of 4 ft 81⁄2 in ; others used gauges ranging from 2 ft to 6 ft. As a general rule, southern railroads were built to one or another broad gauge, mostly 5 ft, while northern railroads that were not standard-gauge tended to be narrow-gauge. The Pacific Railroad Acts of 1863 specified standard gauge.
References
↑ Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (1976) table Q398; Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2011; pp. 1064, 1068.
↑ Southern railroad gauge change accessed 13 Mar 201.
↑ Albert W. Niemi, U.S. economic history (1980) p 71
↑ See: Robert C. Black, The Railroads of the Confederacy. (1988); George Edgar Turner, Victory Rode the Rails: The Strategic Place of the Railroads in the Civil War (1953).
↑ Charles W. Ramsdell, "The Confederate Government and the Railroads," American Historical Review, vol. 22, no. 4 (July 1917), pg. 795.
↑ Mary Elizabeth Massey. Ersatz in the Confederacy. 1952; pg. 128.
↑ Ramsdell, "The Confederate Government and the Railroads," pp. 809–810.
↑ Stover, John F. (1955). The Railroads of the South, 1865–1900: A Study in Finance and Control. University of North Carolina Press.
↑ Mark Wahlgren Summers, Railroads, Reconstruction, and the Gospel of Prosperity: Aid Under the Radical Republicans, 1865-1877 (1984)
↑ A. B. Moore, "Railroad Building in Alabama During the Reconstruction Period" The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 1, No. 4. (Nov., 1935), pp. 421–441. JSTOR
↑ Weissenbacher, Manfred (2009). Sources of Power: How Energy Forges Human History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. p.243. ISBN9780313356261.
↑ Alfred D. Chandler, The railroads, the nation's first big business (1981) ch 1
↑ Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., "The Railroads: Pioneers in Modern Corporate Management," Business History Review (1965) 39#1 pp. 16–40 in JSTOR
1 2 3 Carosso, Vincent P. (1987). The Morgans: Private International Bankers, 1854–1913. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN978-0-674-58729-8.
↑ Rose, Mark H.; Seely, Bruce E.; Barrett, Paul F. (2006). The Best Transportation System in the World: Railroads, Trucks, Airlines, and American Public Policy in the Twentieth Century. Ohio State University Press. pp.19–21. ISBN978-0-8142-1036-9.
↑ Interstate Commerce Commission. Washington, D.C. (1929). "In the Matter of Consolidation of the Railways of the United States into a Limited Number of Systems." 159 ICC 522.
↑ For a list of the proposed consolidations, see Ripley Plan.
↑ Mount Savage Historical Society. "Iron Furnace." Accessed 2010-04-27.
↑ Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. Harrisburg, PA. "First Iron Rails." Accessed 2010-04-27.
↑ Bowlus, W. Bruce (2010). Iron Ore Transport on the Great Lakes: The Development of a Delivery System to Feed American Industry. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. pp.58–60. ISBN9780786433261.
↑ Schaetzl, Randall J. "Early Iron Mining."Geography of Michigan and the Great Lakes Region. Course at Michigan State University. Accessed 2012-07-10.
↑ White, John H. (1979) [First published by Dover Books, 1968]. A History of the American Locomotive: Its Development, 1830–1880. North Chelmsford, MA: Courier. p.14. ISBN9780486238180.
↑ An Act to Promote the Safety of Employees and Travelers upon Railroads by Compelling Common Carriers Engaged in Interstate Commerce to Equip Their Cars with Automatic Couplers and Continuous Brakes and Their Locomotives with Driving-wheel Brakes, and for Other Purposes. Act of Mar. 2, 1893, 27Stat.531, recodified, as amended, 49 U.S.C.§20302.
↑ George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (New York, 1951).
↑ John E. Clark, Jr., Railroads in the Civil War: The Impact of Management on Victory and Defeat (2004)
↑ Leland H. Jenks, "Railroads as an economic force in American development." Journal of Economic History 4#1 (1944): 1–20. in JSTOR
↑ Jeremy Atack, et al., "Did railroads induce or follow economic growth." Social Science History 34#2 (2010): 171–97. online
↑ Edward C. Kirkland, Industry comes of age: Business, labor, and public policy, 1860–1897 (1961) p 52, 68–74.
↑ Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., "Patterns of American Railroad Finance, 1830–50," Business History Review 28#3 (1954), pp. 248–263 in JSTOR
↑ Kirkland, Industry comes of age (1961) pp 57–68.
↑ Leland H. Jenks, "Britain and American railway development." Journal of Economic History 11#4 (1951): 375–388. in JSTOR
↑ Muriel E. Hidy, ed., British investment in American railways, 1834–1898 (Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation, 1970).
↑ Saul Engelbourg, The man who found the money: John Stewart Kennedy and the financing of the western railroads (1996).
↑ Jay Sexton, "Transatlantic financiers and the Civil War." American Nineteenth Century History 2#3 (2001): 29–46.
↑ Alfred D. Chandler and Stephen Salsbury. "The railroads: Innovators in modern business administration." in Bruce Mazlish, ed., The Railroad and the Space Program (MIT Press, 1965) pp 127–62
↑ Chandler and Salsbury, "The railroads: Innovators in modern business administration." pp 130–34
↑ Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., "The Railroads: Pioneers in Modern Corporate Management". Business History Review 1965 39(1): 16–40. JSTOR3112463.
↑ Walter Licht, working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century (1983) p 289
↑ Dora L. Costa, "The evolution of retirement." in Costa, The Evolution of Retirement: An American Economic History, 1880–1990 (U of Chicago Press, 1998), pp 6–31 online.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
