Rail transportation in the United States consists primarily of freight shipments along a well integrated network of standard gauge private freight railroads that also extend into Canada and Mexico. The United States has the largest rail transport network size of any country in the world, at a total of approximately 160,000 miles (260,000km).
Passenger service serves as a mass transit option for Americans with commuter rail in most major American cities, especially on the U.S. East Coast. Intercity passenger service was once a large and vital part of the nation's passenger transportation network, but it began playing an increasingly diminished role for passengers in the 20th century as commercial air traffic and the Interstate Highway System made commercial air and vehicle transport a practical option throughout the United States.
Railroads continued to expand throughout the rest of the 1800s, eventually reaching nearly every corner of the nation. The nation's railroads were temporarily nationalized between 1917 and 1920 by the United States Railroad Administration, as a result of U.S. entry into World War I. Railroad mileage in the nation peaked at this time. Railroads were affected deeply by the Great Depression in the United States, with some lines being abandoned during this time. A major increase in traffic during World War II brought a temporary reprieve, but after the war railroads faced intense competition from automobiles and aircraft and began a long decline. Passenger service was especially hard hit, with the federal government creating Amtrak in 1971 to take over responsibility for intercity passenger travel. Numerous railroad companies went bankrupt starting in the 1960s, most notably Penn Central Transportation Company in 1971, in the largest bankruptcy in the nation's history at the time. Once again, the federal government intervened, forming Conrail in 1976 to assume control of bankrupt railroads in the northeast.
Railroads' fortunes began to change following the passage of the Staggers Rail Act in 1980, which deregulated railroad companies, who had previously faced much stronger regulation than competing modes of transportation. With innovations such as trailer-on-flatcar and intermodal freight transport, railroad traffic began to increase. Following the Staggers Act, many railroads merged, forming major systems such as CSX and Norfolk Southern in the Eastern United States, and BNSF Railway in the Western United States, and Union Pacific Railroad also purchased a number of competitors. Another result of the Staggers Act was the rise of shortline railroads, which formed to operate lines that major railroads abandoned or sold off. Hundreds of these companies were formed by the end of the century. Freight railroads invested in modernization and capacity improvements as they entered the 21st century, and intermodal transport continued to grow, while traditional traffic such as coal fell.
Between the 1820s and 1840s, Americans closely watched the development of railways in Great Britain. The main competition came from canals, many of which were in operation under state ownership, and from privately owned steamboats plying the nation's vast river system. In 1829, Massachusetts prepared an elaborate plan. Government support, most especially the detailing of officers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – the nation's only repository of civil engineering expertise – was crucial in assisting private enterprise in building nearly all the country's railroads. Army Engineer officers surveyed and selected routes, planned, designed, and constructed rights-of-way, track, and structures, and introduced the Army's system of reports and accountability to the railroad companies. More than one in ten of the 1,058 graduates from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point between 1802 and 1866 became corporate presidents, chief engineers, treasurers, superintendents and general managers of railroad companies.[4] Among the Army officers who thus assisted the building and managing of the first American railroads were Stephen Harriman Long, George Washington Whistler, and Herman Haupt.
State governments granted charters that created the business corporation and gave a limited right of eminent domain, allowing the railroad to buy needed land, even if the owner objected.[note 1]
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) was chartered in 1827 to build a steam railroad west from Baltimore, Maryland, to a point on the Ohio River. It began scheduled freight service over its first section on May 24, 1830. The first railroad to carry passengers, and, by accident, the first tourist railroad, began operating 1827. It was the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company, initially a gravity road feeding anthracite coal downhill to the Lehigh Canal and using mule-power to return nine miles up the mountain; but, by the summer of 1829, as documented by newspapers, it regularly carried passengers. Later renamed the Summit Hill & Mauch Chunk Railroad, it added a steam powered cable-return track for true two-way operation by 1843, and ran as a common carrier and tourist road from the 1890s to 1937. Lasting 111 years, the SH&MC is described by some to be the world's first roller coaster.[note 2]
The first purpose-built common carrier railroad in the northeast was the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad; incorporated in 1826, it began operating in August 1831. Soon, a second passenger line, the Saratoga & Schenectady Railroad, started service in June 1832.[5]:1–115
Soon, other roads that would themselves be purchased or merged into larger entities, formed. The Camden & Amboy Railroad (C&A), the first railroad built in New Jersey, completed its route between its namesake cities in 1834. The C&A ran successfully for decades connecting New York City to the Delaware Valley, and would eventually become part of the Pennsylvania Railroad.
By 1850, over 9,000 miles (14,000km) of railroad lines had been built.[7] The B&O's westward route reached the Ohio River in 1852, the first eastern seaboard railroad to do so.[8]:Ch.V Railroad companies in the North and Midwest constructed networks that linked nearly every major city by 1860.
The First Transcontinental Railroad in the U.S. was built across North America in the 1860s, linking the railroad network of the eastern U.S. with California on the Pacific coast. Finished on May 10, 1869, at the Golden spike event at Promontory Summit, Utah, it created a nationwide mechanized transportation network that revolutionized the population and economy of the American West, catalyzing the transition from the wagon trains of previous decades to a modern transportation system. It achieved the status of first transcontinental railroad by connecting myriad eastern U.S. railroads to the Pacific Ocean. However it was not the world's longest railroad, as Canada's Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) had, by 1867, already accumulated more than 2,055 kilometres (1,277mi) of track by connecting Portland, Maine, and the three northern New England states with the Canadian Atlantic provinces, and west as far as Port Huron, Michigan, through Sarnia, Ontario.
Authorized by the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 and heavily backed by the federal government, the first transcontinental railroad was the culmination of a decades-long movement to build such a line and was one of the crowning achievements of the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, completed four years after his death. The building of the railroad required enormous feats of engineering and labor in the crossing of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains by the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) and Central Pacific Railroad, the two federally chartered enterprises that built the line westward and eastward respectively.[9] The building of the railroad was motivated in part to bind the Union together during the strife of the American Civil War. It substantially accelerated the populating of the West by homesteaders, leading to rapid cultivation of new farm lands. The Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific Railroad combined operations in 1870 and formally merged in 1885; the Union Pacific originally bought the Southern Pacific in 1901 and was forced to divest it in 1913, but took it over again in 1996.
Much of the original roadbed is still in use today and owned by UP, which is descended from both of the original railroads.
Railroad mileage increase by groups of states Source: Chauncey Depew (ed.), One Hundred Years of American Commerce 1795–1895 p 111
Region
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
New England
2,507
3,660
4,494
5,982
6,831
Middle States
3,202
6,705
10,964
15,872
21,536
Southern States
2,036
8,838
11,192
14,778
29,209
Western States and Territories
1,276
11,400
24,587
52,589
62,394
Pacific States and Territories
23
1,677
4,080
9,804
Totals
9,021
30,626
52,914
93,301
129,774
Many Canadian and U.S. railroads originally used various broad gauges, but most were converted to 4ft8+1⁄2in (1,435mm) by 1886, when the conversion of much of the southern rail network from 5ft (1,524mm) gauge took place. This and the standardization of couplings and air brakes enabled the pooling and interchange of locomotives and rolling stock.
The railroad had its largest impact on the American transportation system during the second half of the 19th century. The standard historical interpretation holds that the railroads were central to the development of a national market in the United States and served as a model of how to organize, finance and manage a large corporation,[10] along with allowing growth of the American population outside of the eastern regions.
The principal mainline railroads concentrated their efforts on moving freight and passengers over long distances. But many had suburban services near large cities, which might also be served by Streetcar and Interurban lines. The Interurban was a concept which relied almost exclusively on passenger traffic for revenue. Unable to survive the Great Depression, the failure of most Interurbans by that time left many cities without suburban passenger railroads, although the largest cities such as New York City, Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia continued to have suburban service. The major railroads passenger flagship services included multi-day journeys on luxury trains resembling hotels, which were unable to compete with airlines in the 1950s. Rural communities were served by slow trains no more than twice a day. They survived until the 1960s because the same train hauled the Railway Post Office cars, paid for by the US Post Office. RPOs were withdrawn when mail sorting was mechanized.
As early as the 1930s, automobile travel had begun to cut into the rail passenger market, somewhat reducing economies of scale, but it was the development of the Interstate Highway System and of commercial aviation in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as increasingly restrictive regulation, that dealt the most damaging blows to rail transportation, both passenger and freight. General Motors and others were convicted of running the streetcar industry into the ground purposefully in what is referred to as the Great American Streetcar Scandal. There was little point in operating passenger trains to advertise freight service when those who made decisions about freight shipping traveled by car and by air, and when the railroads' chief competitors for that market were interstate trucking companies.
Soon, the only things keeping most passenger trains running were legal obligations. Meanwhile, companies who were interested in using railroads for profitable freight traffic were looking for ways to get out of those legal obligations, and it looked like intercity passenger rail service would soon become extinct in the United States beyond a few highly populated corridors. The final blow for passenger trains in the U.S. came with the loss of railroad post offices in the 1960s. On May 1, 1971, with only a few exceptions, the federally-funded Amtrak took over all intercity passenger rail service in the continental United States. The Rio Grande, with its Denver-OgdenRio Grande Zephyr and the Southern with its Washington, D.C.–New OrleansSouthern Crescent chose to stay out of Amtrak, and the Rock Island, with two intrastate Illinois trains, was too far gone to be included into Amtrak.
Freight transportation continued to labor under regulations developed when rail transport had a monopoly on intercity traffic, and railroads only competed with one another. An entire generation of rail managers had been trained to operate under this regulatory regime. Labor unions and their work rules were likewise a formidable barrier to change. Overregulation, management and unions formed an "iron triangle" of stagnation, frustrating the efforts of leaders such as the New York Central's Alfred E. Perlman. In particular, the dense rail network in the Northeastern U.S. was in need of radical pruning and consolidation. A spectacularly unsuccessful beginning was the 1968 formation and subsequent bankruptcy of the Penn Central, barely two years later.
On routes where a single railroad has had an undisputed monopoly, passenger service was as spartan and as expensive as the market and ICC regulation would bear, since such railroads had no need to advertise their freight services. However, on routes where two or three railroads were in direct competition with each other for freight business, such railroads would spare no expense to make their passenger trains as fast, luxurious, and affordable as possible, as it was considered to be the most effective way of advertising their profitable freight services.
The National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP) was formed in 1967 to lobby for the continuation of passenger trains. Its lobbying efforts were hampered somewhat by Democratic opposition to any sort of rail subsidies to the privately owned railroads, and Republican opposition to nationalization of the railroad industry. The proponents were aided by the fact that few in the federal government wanted to be held responsible for the seemingly inevitable extinction of the passenger train, which most regarded as tantamount to political suicide. The urgent need to solve the passenger train disaster was heightened by the bankruptcy filing of the Penn Central, the dominant railroad in the Northeastern United States, on June 21, 1970.
Any railroad operating intercity passenger service could contract with the NRPC, thereby joining the national system.
Participating railroads bought into the new corporation using a formula based on their recent intercity passenger losses. The purchase price could be satisfied either by cash or rolling stock; in exchange, the railroads received Amtrak common stock.
Any participating railroad was freed of the obligation to operate intercity passenger service after May 1971, except for those services chosen by the U.S. Department of Transportation as part of a "basic system" of service and paid for by NRPC using its federal funds.
Railroads who chose not to join the Amtrak system were required to continue operating their existing passenger service until 1975 and thenceforth had to pursue the customary ICC approval process for any discontinuance or alteration to the service.
The original working brand name for NRPC was Railpax, which eventually became Amtrak. At the time, many Washington insiders viewed the corporation as a face-saving way to give passenger trains the one "last hurrah" demanded by the public, but expected that the NRPC would quietly disappear in a few years as public interest waned. However, while Amtrak's political and financial support have often been shaky, popular and political support for Amtrak has allowed it to survive into the 21st century.
The freight industry continued its decline until Congress passed the Staggers Rail Act in 1980, which largely deregulated the rail industry. Since then, U.S. freight railroads have reorganized, discontinued their lightly used routes and returned to profitability.[13]:245–252
Freight railroads play an important role in the U.S. economy, especially for moving imports and exports using containers, and for shipments of coal and oil. Productivity rose 172% between 1981 and 2000, while rates decreased by 55%, after accounting for inflation. Rail's share of the American freight market rose to 43%.[14]
U.S. railroads still play a major role in the nation's freight shipping. They carried 750billion ton-miles by 1975 which doubled to 1.5trillion ton-miles in 2005.[15][16] In the 1950s, the U.S. and Europe moved roughly the same percentage of freight by rail; by 2000, the share of U.S. rail freight was 38% while in Europe only 8% of freight traveled by rail; a large proportion of this difference is due to external factors such as geography and higher use of goods like coal.[17][18][19][20]
In ton-miles, railroads annually move more than 25% of the United States' freight and connect businesses with each other across the country and with markets overseas.[15] In 2018, US rail freight had a transport energy efficiency of 473 tons.miles per gallon of fuel.[21] In recent years, railroads have gradually been losing intermodal traffic to trucking.[22]
U.S. freight railroads are separated into three classes, set by the Surface Transportation Board, based on annual revenues:
Class I for freight railroads with annual operating revenues above $346.8million in 2006 dollars. In 1900, there were 132 Class I railroads. In 2024, as the result of mergers, bankruptcies, and major changes in the regulatory definition of "Class I", there are only six railroads operating in the United States that meet the criteria for Class I. As of 2011[update], U.S. freight railroads operated 139,679 route-miles (224,792km) of standard gauge in the U.S. Although Amtrak qualifies for Class I status under the revenue criterion, it is not considered a Class I railroad because it is not a freight railroad.
Class II for freight railroads with revenues between $27.8million and $346.7million in 2000 dollars
Class III for all other freight revenues.
In 2013, the U.S. moved more oil out of North Dakota by rail than by the Trans-Alaska pipeline.[23] This trend—tenfold in two years and 40-fold in five years—is forecast to increase.[24]
There are four different classes of freight railroads: Class I, regional, local line haul, and switching & terminal. Class I railroads are defined as those with revenue of at least $346.8million in 2006. They comprise just one percent of the number of freight railroads, but account for 67 percent of the industry's mileage, 90 percent of its employees, and 93 percent of its freight revenue.
A regional railroad is a line haul railroad with at least 350 miles (560km) and/or revenue between $40million and the Class I threshold. There were 33 regional railroads in 2006. Most have between 75 and 500 employees.
Local line haul railroads operate less than 350 miles (560km) and earn less than $40million per year (most earn less than $5million per year). In 2006, there were 323 local line haul railroads. They generally perform point-to-point service over short distances.
Switching and terminal (S&T) carriers are railroads that primarily provide switching and/or terminal services, regardless of revenue. They perform pick up and delivery services within a certain area.
Traffic and public benefits
Freight in the United States by percent ton-miles (2010 FRA report)Double-stack yard operations in Cincinnati
U.S. freight railroads operate in a highly competitive marketplace. According to a 2010 FRA report, within the U.S., railroads carried 39.5% of freight by ton-mile, followed by trucks (28.6%), oil pipelines (19.6%), barges (12%) and air (0.3%).[25] However, railroads' revenue share has been slowly falling for decades, a reflection of the intensity of the competition they face and of the large rate reductions railroads have passed through to their customers over the years.[citation needed]
In 2011, North American railroads operated 1,471,736 freight cars and 31,875 locomotives, with 215,985 employees. They originated 39.53million carloads (averaging 63 tons each) and generated $81.7billion in freight revenue of present 2014. The average haul was 917 miles. The largest (Class 1) U.S. railroads carried 10.17million intermodal containers and 1.72million piggyback trailers. Intermodal traffic was 6.2% of tonnage originated and 12.6% of revenue. The largest commodities were coal, chemicals, farm products, nonmetallic minerals and intermodal. Other major commodities carried include lumber, automobiles, and waste materials. Coal alone was 43.3% of tonnage and 24.7% of revenue.[26] Coal accounted for roughly half of U.S. electricity generation[27] and was a major export. As natural gas became cheaper than coal, coal supplies dropped 11% in 2015 but coal rail freight dropped by up to 40%, allowing an increase in car transport by rail, some in tri-level railcars.[28] US coal consumption dwindled from over 1,100 million tons in 2008 to 687 million tons in 2018.[29]
Freight rail working with passenger rail
Prior to Amtrak's creation in 1970, intercity passenger rail service in the U.S. was provided by the same companies that provided freight service. When Amtrak was formed, in return for government permission to exit the passenger rail business, freight railroads donated passenger equipment to Amtrak and helped it get started with a capital infusion of some $200million.
The vast majority of the 22,000 or so miles over which Amtrak operates are actually owned by freight railroads. By law, freight railroads must grant Amtrak access to their track upon request. In return, Amtrak pays fees to freight railroads to cover the incremental costs of Amtrak's use of freight railroad tracks.[citation needed]
Passenger trains in North America (not shown: Brightline in Florida)
The sole long-distance intercity passenger railroad in the continental U.S. is Amtrak, and multiple current commuter rail systems provide regional intercity services such as New York-New Haven, and Stockton-San Jose. In Alaska, intercity service is provided by Alaska Railroad instead of Amtrak. Commuter rail systems exist in more than a dozen metropolitan areas, but these systems are not extensively interconnected, so commuter rail cannot be used alone to traverse the country. Commuter systems have been proposed in approximately two dozen other cities, but interplays between various local-government administrative bottlenecks and ripple effects from the 2007–2012 global financial crisis have generally pushed such projects farther and farther into the future, or have even sometimes mothballed them entirely.
Privately run inter-city passenger rail operations have also been restarted since 2018 in south Florida, with additional routes under development. Brightline is a higher-speed rail train, run by All Aboard Florida. It began service in January 2018 between Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach; its service was extended to Miami in May 2018, and an extension to Orlando International Airport opened for daily service on September 22, 2023, which includes a segment of brand new rail line from Orlando eastward toward the Atlantic coast.[30] Brightline has also proposed a further extension of its service from Orlando to Tampa via Walt Disney World,[31] and a high-speed rail service from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.[32] In addition, the Texas Central Railway is currently developing plans for a proposed greenfield high-speed rail line using Japanese Shinkansen trains between Dallas and Houston. Construction was expected to begin in 2020 for a 2026 opening,[33] but a major lawsuit delayed the project and as of February 2023 there are no signs of construction activity.[34]
Car types
The basic design of a passenger car was standardized by 1870. By 1900, the main car types were: baggage, coach, combine, diner, dome car, lounge, observation, private, Pullman, railroad post office (RPO) and sleeper.
19th century: First passenger cars and early development
The first passenger cars resembled stagecoaches. They were short, often less than 10ft (3.05m) long, tall and rode on a single pair of axles.
American mail cars first appeared in the 1860s and at first followed English design. They had a hook that would catch the mailbag in its crook.
As locomotive technology progressed in the mid-19th century, trains grew in length and weight. Passenger cars grew along with them, first getting longer with the addition of a second truck (one at each end), and wider as their suspensions improved. Cars built for European use featured side door compartments, while American car design favored a single pair of doors at one end of the car in the car's vestibule; compartmentized cars on American railroads featured a long hallway with doors from the hall to the compartments.
One possible reason for this difference in design principles between American and European carbuilding practice could be the average distance between stations on the two continents. While most European railroads connected towns and villages that were still very closely spaced, American railroads had to travel over much greater distances to reach their destinations. Building passenger cars with a long passageway through the length of the car allowed the passengers easy access to the restroom, among other things, on longer journeys.
Dining cars first appeared in the late 1870s and into the 1880s. Until this time, the common practice was to stop for meals at restaurants along the way (which led to the rise of Fred Harvey's chain of Harvey House restaurants in America). At first, the dining car was simply a place to serve meals that were picked up en route, but they soon evolved to include galleys in which the meals were prepared.
By the 1920s, passenger cars on the larger standard gauge railroads were normally between 60 and 70 feet (18 and 21m) long. The cars of this time were still quite ornate, many of them being built by experienced coach makers and skilled carpenters.
With the 1930s came the widespread use of stainless steel for car bodies. The typical passenger car was now much lighter than its "heavyweight" wood cousins of old. The new "lightweight" and streamlined cars carried passengers in speed and comfort to an extent that had not been experienced to date. Aluminum and Cor-ten were also used in lightweight car construction, but stainless steel was the preferred material for car bodies. It is not the lightest of materials, nor is it the least expensive, but stainless steel cars could be, and often were, left unpainted except for the car's reporting marks that were required by law.
By the end of the 1930s, railroads and car builders were debuting car body and interior styles that could only be dreamed of before. In 1937, the Pullman Company delivered the first cars equipped with roomettes—that is, the car's interior was sectioned off into compartments, much like the coaches that were still in widespread use across Europe. Pullman's roomettes, however, were designed with the single traveler in mind. The roomette featured a large picture window, a privacy door, a single fold-away bed, a sink and small toilet. The roomette's floor space was barely larger than the space taken up by the bed, but it allowed the traveler to ride in luxury compared to the multilevel semiprivate berths of old.
Now that passenger cars were lighter, they were able to carry heavier loads, but the size of the average passenger load that rode in them didn't increase to match the cars' new capacities. The average passenger car couldn't get any wider or longer due to side clearances along the railroad lines, but they generally could get taller because they were still shorter than many freight cars and locomotives. As a result, the railroads soon began building and buying dome and bilevel cars to carry more passengers.
Carbody styles have generally remained consistent since the middle of the 20th century. While new car types have not made much of an impact, the existing car types have been further enhanced with new technology.
Starting in the 1950s, the passenger travel market declined in North America, though there was growth in commuter rail. The higher clearances in North America enabled bi-level commuter coaches that could hold more passengers. These cars started to become common in the United States in the 1960s.
While intercity passenger rail travel declined in the United States during the 1950s, ridership continued to increase in Europe during that time. With the increase came newer technology on existing and new equipment. The Spanish company Talgo began experimenting in the 1940s with technology that would enable the axles to steer into a curve, allowing the train to move around the curve at a higher speed. The steering axles evolved into mechanisms that would also tilt the passenger car as it entered a curve to counter the centrifugal force experienced by the train, further increasing speeds on existing track. Today, tilting passenger trains are commonplace. Talgo's trains are used on some short and medium distance routes such as Amtrak Cascades from Eugene, Oregon, to Vancouver, British Columbia.
In August 2016, the Department of Transportation approved the largest loan in the department's history, $2.45billion to upgrade the passenger train service in the Northeast region. The $2.45billion will be used to purchase 28 new train sets for the high-speed Acela train between Washington through Philadelphia, New York and into Boston. The money will also be used build new stations and platforms. The money will also be used to rehabilitate railroad tracks and upgrade four stations, including Washington's Union Station and Baltimore's Penn Station.
As of 2014, U.S. railroad mileage has stabilized at approximately 160,000 miles (260,000km).[35]
Map showing passenger lines in the United States. High-speed section shown in yellow.
As of 2022, the only operating high speed rail service in the United States is Amtrak's Acela, between Washington, DC, and Boston. It currently has a maximum speed of 150 miles per hour (240km/h), and only in some sections between Boston and Providence, RI, soon to be 160 miles per hour (260km/h) after introduction of new Avelia Liberty trains, eventually to be upgraded to 186 miles per hour (299km/h) over some sections. The state of California is constructing its own HSR system, California High-Speed Rail, constructed to 220 miles per hour (350km/h) standards in some places. The first section in the Central Valley is due to open around 2027.
Higher-speed rail
While the Northeast Corridor hosts the majority of rail services that reach higher speeds of 125 miles per hour (201km/h), there is also the Brightline in Florida, which reaches speeds of 125 miles per hour (201km/h) on the section between Cocoa, Florida and Orlando. On the Northeast Corridor, there are sections that even reach up to speeds of 150 miles per hour (240km/h), usually for the Acela trains. Other Amtrak diesel routes have higher-speed service that ranges from speeds between 90 miles per hour (140km/h) to 110 miles per hour (180km/h). For routes in the Western United States such as the Pacific Surfliner and Southwest Chief, those services can reach up to speeds of 90 miles per hour (140km/h) on portions of their routes, while the Texas Eagle can reach up to speeds of 100 miles per hour (160km/h) on portions of its route. There has been plans to upgrade the portions of the route for the Pacific Surfliner to speeds up to 110 miles per hour (180km/h) in Orange County and San Diego County, however funding has yet to be available. Meanwhile, for routes in the Midwestern United States and the Northeastern United States such as the Lincoln Service, Blue Water, Wolverine, Hartford Line, Lake Shore Limited, and Empire Service can reach up to speeds of 110 miles per hour (180km/h) on their entire routes or portions of their routes.
There are certain commuter rail lines in the United States that achieve similar speed ranges of higher-speed rail, but are not classified as higher-speed rail. Despite commuter trains also running along the Northeast Corridor alongside Amtrak services on the route, only one commuter rail line can have similar speed ranges to higher-speed rail, which is the MARCPenn Line that runs from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, MD, which can reach up to speeds of 125 miles per hour (201km/h). Similarly, on the Surf Line, the MetrolinkOrange County and Inland Empire–Orange County lines can reach up to speeds of 90 miles per hour (140km/h) on portions of the Surf Line between Santa Ana, California and Oceanside, California. The Coaster commuter rail also reaches 90 miles per hour (140km/h) on its entire route between San Diego and Oceanside.
Every piece of railroad rolling stock operating in North American interchange service is required to carry a standardized set of reporting marks. The marks are made up of a two- to four-letter code identifying the owner of the equipment accompanied by an identification number and statistics on the equipment's capacity and tare (unloaded) weight. Marks whose codes end in X (such as TTGX) are used on equipment owned by entities that are not common carrier railroads themselves. Marks whose codes end in U are used on containers that are carried in intermodal transport, and marks whose codes end in Z are used on trailers that are carried in intermodal transport, per ISO standard 6346). Most freight cars carry automatic equipment identificationRFID transponders.
Typically, railroads operating in the United States reserve one- to four-digit identification numbers for powered equipment such as diesel locomotives and six-digit identification numbers for unpowered equipment. There is no hard and fast rule for how equipment is numbered; each railroad maintains its own numbering policy for its equipment.
Minor derailments are a routine occurrence in the United States. 1,164 derailments were reported in 2022, an average of three a day; the vast majority did not cause injuries or deaths. This was down 44 percent from 2000, and more than 75 percent from the end of the 1970s.[37] For a variety of reasons,[vague] American freight railroads' safety performance has been described as "very bad by European standards".[38]
↑ The SH&MCsbRR carried sundries, groceries, and goods up to Summit Hill, including official postal deliveries.
Related Research Articles
Rail transport is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of land transport, next to road transport. It is used for about 8% of passenger and freight transport globally, thanks to its energy efficiency and potentially high speed.
A train is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and transport people or freight. Trains are typically pulled or pushed by locomotives, though some are self-propelled, such as multiple units. Passengers and cargo are carried in railroad cars, also known as wagons. Trains are designed to a certain gauge, or distance between rails. Most trains operate on steel tracks with steel wheels, the low friction of which makes them more efficient than other forms of transport.
The vast majority of passenger travel in the United States occurs by automobile for shorter distances and airplane or railroad for longer distances. Most cargo in the U.S. is transported by, in descending order, railroad, truck, pipeline, or boat; air shipping is typically used only for perishables and premium express shipments. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak, is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. states and three Canadian provinces. Amtrak is a portmanteau of the words America and trak, the latter itself a sensational spelling of track.
The Acela is Amtrak's flagship passenger train service along the Northeast Corridor (NEC) in the Northeastern United States between Washington, D.C., and Boston via 13 intermediate stops, including Baltimore, New York City and Philadelphia. Acela trains are the fastest in the Americas, reaching 150 miles per hour (240 km/h), but only over 49.9 miles (80.3 km) of the 457-mile (735 km) route.
The Northeast Corridor (NEC) is an electrified railroad line in the Northeast megalopolis of the United States. Owned primarily by Amtrak, it runs from Boston in the north to Washington, D.C. in the south, with major stops in Providence, New Haven, Stamford, New York City, Trenton, Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore. The NEC closely parallels Interstate 95 for most of its length, and, as of 2013, is the busiest passenger rail line in the United States both by ridership and by service frequency. The NEC carries more than 2,200 trains daily.
The Keystone Service is a 195 mile regional passenger train service from Amtrak between the Harrisburg Transportation Center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and 30th Street Station in Philadelphia, running along the Philadelphia to Harrisburg Main Line. Most trains continue along the Northeast Corridor (NEC) to Penn Station in New York City.
MARC is a commuter rail system in the Washington–Baltimore area. MARC is administered by the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) and operated under contract by Alstom and Amtrak on track owned by CSX Transportation (CSXT) and Amtrak. In 2022, the system had a ridership of 2,815,900, or about 12,100 per weekday as of the third quarter of 2023, less than pre-COVID-19 pandemic weekday ridership of 40,000.
Saint Paul Union Depot is a historic railroad station and intermodal transit hub in the Lowertown neighborhood of Saint Paul, Minnesota. It serves light rail, intercity rail, intercity bus, and local bus services.
The Vermonter is a passenger train operated by Amtrak between St. Albans, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., via New York City. It replaced the overnight Montrealer, which terminated in Montreal until 1995. Amtrak receives funding from the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont for Vermonter operations north of New Haven.
Various terms are used for passenger railway lines and equipment; the usage of these terms differs substantially between areas:
Rail freight transport is the use of railroads and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers.
Plans for high-speed rail in the United States date back to the High-Speed Ground Transportation Act of 1965. Various state and federal proposals have followed. Despite being one of the world's first countries to get high-speed trains, it failed to spread. Definitions of what constitutes high-speed rail vary, including a range of speeds over 110 mph (180 km/h) and dedicated rail lines. Inter-city rail with top speeds between 90 and 125 mph is sometimes referred to in the United States as higher-speed rail.
Railroad electrification in the United States began at the turn of the 20th century and comprised many different systems in many different geographical areas, few of which were connected. Despite this situation, these systems shared a small number of common reasons for electrification.
The GE E60 is a family of six-axle 6,000 hp (4.5 MW) C-C electric locomotives made by GE Transportation Systems (GE) between 1972 and 1983. The E60s were produced in several variants for both freight and passenger use in the United States and Mexico. GE designed the locomotive for use on the Black Mesa and Lake Powell Railroad (BM&LP), a dedicated coal-hauling route in Arizona, which began operation in 1973. That same year GE adapted the design for high-speed passenger service on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. The largest customer was Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (NdeM), the state-owned railroad in Mexico, which bought 39 for a new electrification project in the early 1980s.
The Philadelphia to Harrisburg Main Line is a rail line owned and operated by Amtrak in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. This is the only electrified Amtrak line in the United States outside of the main line of the Northeast Corridor. The line runs from Philadelphia, where it meets the Northeast Corridor at Zoo Junction at milepost 1.9, west to Harrisburg, where electrification ends. The Main Line is part of the longer Keystone Corridor, which continues west to Pittsburgh along the Norfolk Southern Railway's Pittsburgh Line. This section is sometimes referred to as "Keystone East" and is part of Amtrak's Keystone Service.
A passenger train is a train used to transport people along a railroad line. These trains may consist of unpowered passenger railroad cars hauled by one or more locomotives, or may be self-propelled; self propelled passenger trains are known as multiple units or railcars. Passenger trains stop at stations or depots, where passengers may board and disembark. In most cases, passenger trains operate on a fixed schedule and have priority over freight trains.
The Georgia Rail Passenger Program (GRPP) was a set of plans, as yet unbuilt, for intercity and commuter rail in the U.S. state of Georgia.
The Horizon is a type of single-level intercity railroad passenger car used by Amtrak, the national rail passenger carrier in the United States. Amtrak ordered the cars to supplement their existing fleet of Amfleet I single-level cars used on shorter distance corridor trains. The design was based on the Comet railcar used for commuter railroads, but with modifications to make them more suitable for intercity service. Bombardier Transportation built 104 cars from 1988 to 1990 in two basic types: coaches and food service (café) cars.
Avelia Liberty is a tilting high-speed passenger train built for the North American market by French manufacturer Alstom and assembled in the United States. Amtrak has ordered 28 train sets for use on its flagship Acela service along the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C., via New York City and Philadelphia.
↑ Williams, Marcus (March 29, 2016). "North American rail: One door closes, another opens". Automotive Logistics. Retrieved May 14, 2017. 11% compared to 2014 production, according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). The drop hit railways' revenue by as much as 40% in some segments.
Weatherford, Brian A. et al. technical_reports/TR603/ The State of U.S. Railroads A Review of Capacity and Performance Data, PDF[permanent dead link] from RAND, 2008, ISBN978-0-8330-4505-8
Wright, Chester Whitney. Economic History of the United States. Edited by William Homer Spencer. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. (1949).
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)" link
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