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Railroad and train related history of the United States

Railroads played a large role in the development of the United States from the industrial revolution in the Northeast (1820s–1850s) to the settlement of the West (1850s–1890s). The American railroad mania began with the founding of the first passenger and freight line in the country, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, in 1827, and the "Laying of the First Stone" ceremonies and the beginning of its long construction heading westward over the obstacles of the Appalachian Mountains eastern chain in the next year. It flourished with continuous railway building projects for the next 45 years until the financial Panic of 1873, followed by a major economic depression, that bankrupted many companies and temporarily stymied and ended growth. Railroads not only increased the speed of transport, they also dramatically lowered its cost. For example, the first transcontinental railroad resulted in passengers and freight being able to cross the country in a matter of days instead of months and at one tenth the cost of stagecoach or wagon transport. With economical transportation in the West (which had been referred to as the Great American Desert) now farming, ranching and mining could be done at a profit. As a result, railroads transformed the country, particularly the West (which had few navigable rivers). 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 mile (8 km) 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 due 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. Because of the economic importance and complexity of this new national system and failures in how they were run, the first federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission was created in the 1880s. 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 replacement of steam with 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, including New York City, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D. C. 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 254251 mile (409176 km) in 1916 and fell to in 2011. 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. 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, primarily due to external factors such as geography and higher use of goods like coal. In recent years, railroads have gradually been losing intermodal traffic to trucking.

The animal powered Leiper Railroad followed in 1810 after the preceding successful experiment—designed and built by merchant Thomas Leiper, the railway connected Crum Creek to Ridley Creek, in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. It was used until 1829, when it was temporarily replaced by the Leiper Canal, then it was reopened to replace the canal in 1852. This was the first railroad meant to be permanent, and the first to evolve into trackage of a common carrier after an intervening closure. In 1826 Massachusetts incorporated Quincy's Granite Railway as a common freight carrier to primarily haul granite for the construction of the Bunker Hill Monument; operations began later that year, and which still had a section of it operating until the 1940s. Other railroads authorized by states in 1826 and constructed in the following years included the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company's gravity railroad; and the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, to carry freight and passengers around a bend in the Erie Canal. To link the port of Baltimore to the Ohio River, the state of Maryland in 1827 chartered the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), the first section of which opened in 1830. Similarly, the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company was chartered in 1827 to connect Charleston to the Savannah River, and Pennsylvania built the Main Line of Public Works between Philadelphia and the Ohio River. The Americans closely followed and copied British railroad technology. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first common carrier and started passenger train service in May 1830, initially using horses to pull train cars.

The South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company was the first to use steam locomotives regularly beginning with the Best Friend of Charleston, the first American built locomotive intended for revenue service, in December 1830. The B&O started developing steam locomotives in 1829 with Peter Cooper's Tom Thumb. 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. The B&O's westward route reached the Ohio River in 1852, the first eastern seaboard railroad to do so. By 1850, 9000 mile (14484 km) of railroad lines had been built.

The federal government operated a land grant system between 1855 and 1871, through which new railway companies in the west were given millions of acres they could sell to prospective farmers or pledge to bondholders. A total of 129 million acres (52,204,494 km2) were granted to the railroads before the program ended, supplemented by a further 51 million acres (20,638,986 km2) 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.

Railroads soon replaced many canals and turnpikes and by the 1870s had significantly displaced steamboats as well. 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.

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.

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 mile (8 km) of a railway. A large number of short lines were built, but due 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. In the South, most railroads in 1860 were local affairs connecting cotton regions with the nearest waterway. Most transports were 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. 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. 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. In 1864–65 the Confederate railroad network collapsed; little traffic moved in 1865. The Southern states had blocked westward rail expansion before 1860, but after secession the Pacific Railway Acts were passed in 1862 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. 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 (17,700 km) in 1870 to 29,000 miles (46,700 km) 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. 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. Labor unrest continued into the 1880s, such as the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of 1886, which involved over 200,000 workers.

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. 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. On January 12, 1883, the southern section of the second transcontinental railroad line was completed as the Southern Pacific tracks from Los Angeles met the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway at a location 3 mile (5 km) west of the Pecos River near Langtry, Texas. 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. Industrialists such as Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould became wealthy through railroad ownerships, as large railroad companies such as the Grand Trunk Railway and the Southern Pacific Transportation Company spanned several states. In response to monopolistic practices and other excesses of some railroads and their owners, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act and created the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) in 1887. The ICC indirectly controlled the business activities of the railroads through the issuance of extensive regulations. 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. 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 40000 mile (64374 km). 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. 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. (Later in the 20th century, with different economic conditions and changes in the law, UP successfully acquired the SP. See Resurgence of freight railroads in the 1980s.) 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. The Mann Elkins Act of 1910 strengthened the ICC's authority over railroad rates. Subsequently, railroads had difficulty securing revenue sufficient to keep pace with their rising costs, and by 1915 one sixth of the railroad trackage in the country belonged to roads in receivership (bankruptcy). US railroads were at their peak length of trackage in 1916 with 254037 mile (408832 km) of tracks.

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. Management by USRA led to standardization of equipment, reductions of duplicative passenger services, and better coordination of freight traffic.

Following the war, 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. The 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. 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 those lines that survived, the stronger ones were not interested in supporting the weaker ones. In 1940 Congress formally abandoned the Ripley Plan.

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. and Danville, Pennsylvania. 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. 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.

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 Great Britain had early adopted a standard gauge of ussg, 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 5 feet gauge in the South, and a 5 feet 6 inches gauge in Canada. In addition, the Erie Railway was built to 6 feet broad gauge, and in the 1870s a widespread movement looked at the cheaper 3 feet narrow gauge. The Pacific Railway Act of 1863 established the standard gauge for the first transcontinental railroad. Except for the narrow gauge, gauges were standardized across North America after the end of the Civil War in 1865.

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, followed by Lima and Alco later in the 19th and 20th centuries. 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. With the advent of the telegraph in the 1840s, more sophisticated systems were developed that allowed the dissemination of alterations to the timetable, known as train orders. These orders temporarily overrode the timetable, allowing the rescheduling and cancellation or addition of trains. The earliest recorded use of train orders was by the Erie Railroad in 1851. The development of the electrical track circuit in the 1870s led to the use of systems of block signals, which improved the railroads' safety, speed and efficiency. Mechanical interlockings, which prevented conflicting movements at rail junctions and crossings, were also introduced in the U. S. in the 1870s, after their initial development in Britain. By the mid 20th century railroads had begun replacing mechanical interlockings with electronic interlocking systems.

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. 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. 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 court injunction backed by federal troops. Congress attempted to correct these shortcomings in the Erdman Act, passed in 1898. 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 Labor Act, was passed in 1913 and proved more effective, 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. In the 1880s, the number of on the job fatalities of railroad workers was second only to those of coal miners. 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, which led to the Great Railroad Strike of 1922, involving rail shop workers nationwide, followed by a court injunction to end the strike. Congress passed the Railway Labor Act of 1926 to rectify the shortcomings of the RLB procedures. Congress added railroad worker safety laws throughout the 20th century.

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. 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. In the late 19th century pipelines were built for the oil trade, and in the 20th century trucking and aviation emerged.

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 mile (483 km) 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). Funding came from financiers throughout the Northeast, and from Europe, especially Britain. 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. 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. In 1914–1917, they liquidated their American assets to pay for war supplies.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Anti railroad complaints were loudly repeated in late 19th century political rhetoric. The idea of establishing a strong rate fixing federal body was achieved during the Progressive Era, primarily by a coalition of shipping interests. Railroad historians mark the 1906 Hepburn Act that gave the ICC the power to set maximum railroad rates as a damaging blow to the long term profitability and growth of railroads. After 1910 the lines faced an emerging trucking industry to compete with for freight, and automobiles and buses to compete for passenger service. As a result of the rapidly declining bison population, economic opportunities arose through the creation of jobs. Men acquired jobs hunting and skinning bison on the plains, as well as maintaining railroad infrastructure used to transport the valuable bison hides.

The aggressive operation of a locomotive at the imaginary “Pile up station” by fictional engineer “Joe Smashup” formed the basis of a satire that appeared in US newspapers in and around the year 1855.

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. That era has passed as 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." 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. 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.

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 4,273 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)       239 4,578 15,466 47,451 TOTAL U. S. 40 2,755 8,571 28,920 49,168 87,801 163,562

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
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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). online
Chandler, Alfred D. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. (1977). pp 79–205. online

Churella, Albert J. The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume 1: Building an Empire, 1846 1917 (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) online
Deverell, William. Railroad Crossing: Californians and the Railroad, 1850–1910. (U of California Press, 1994). Ducker, James H. Men of the steel rails: Workers on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, 1869–1900. (1982). Gates, Paul. History of Public Land Law Development (1968, government document and not copyright) online; railroad land grants on pp 341 386. Gordon, Sarah. Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829 1929 (Ivan R. Dee 1998); their social, economic, and legal impact. online
Grant, H. Roger. Railroads and the American People (2012) excerpt
Hultgren, Thor. Railway Freight Traffic in Prosperity and Depression (NBER, 1948)
Jenks, Leland H. (1944). "Railroads as an Economic Force in American Development," Journal of Economic History, 4#1 (1944), 1–20. Kirkland, Edward Chase. Men, Cities and Transportation, A Study of New England History 1820–1900. (2 vol. Harvard UP, 1848). Klein, Maury (1997). The Life and Legend of Jay Gould Johns Hopkins UP. online
Klein, Maury. The Life & Legend of E. H. Harriman (2000) U of North Carolina Press. online
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
Miner, Craig. A Most Magnificent Machine: America Adopts the Railroad, 1825–1862 (UP 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)
Lamb, J. Parker. "A Macro scale Look at Railroad History." Railroad History (Fall/Winter 2012), Issue 207, pp 78–89. Riegel, Robert Edgar. The Story of the Western Railroads (1926) online
Saunders, Richard. Main lines: Rebirth of the North American railroads, 1970–2002 (Northern Illinois UP, 2003). Stover, John. History of the Illinois Central Railroad (1975) online
Stover, John. Iron Road to the West: American Railroads in the 1850s (1978) online
Stover, John. The Routledge historical atlas of the American railroads (1999) online
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

Bacon, Benjamin (1997) Sinews of War: How Technology, Industry and Transportation Won the Civil War. Presidio Press. 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
Black, III, Robert C. The Railroads of the Confederacy (1952) excerpt and text search
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 ; 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
Gabel, Christopher R. (1977) Railroad Generalship: Foundations of Civil War Strategy. US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, KS. Combat Studies Institute. 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. 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). 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 online
Weber, Thomas. The Northern Railroads in the Civil War, 1861–1865 (1999) online

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
Dozier, Howard Douglas (1920). A History of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. (New York: Houghton Mifflin). 197 pp. Flint, Henry M. (1868) Railroads of the United States: Their History and Statistics. (Philadelphia. PA: John E. Potter Co.) 452 pp. Johnson, Emory Richard (1908). American Railway Transportation. 2nd rev. ed. (New York: D. Appleton & Co.) 434 pp. 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

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

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