U.S. railroad history dates back to 1815, when Colonel John Stevens obtained a so-called railroad charter to build the New Jersey Railroad Company, which would later become part of the Pennsylvania Railroad. At that time there was no developed overland transportation that was both convenient, fast, and cheap. So the development of railroads was a progressive decision.
John Stevens
It was not difficult to build railroads. Much worse was the situation with locomotives. Then in 1826 all the same Stevenson designed and conducted first tests of his steam locomotive Steam Wagon (they called a steam-powered horse carriage “a steam-powered horse carriage”). D. Stevenson designed a circular track at his estate in Hoboken, New Jersey, to conduct the tests. The tests were successful.
Then in 1829, Hortario Allen, as chief engineer of the Delaware & Hudson Shipping Company, successfully tested a simple, in terms of engineering, English locomotive, called Stourbridge Lion, between Honesdale and Carbonvale, Pennsylvania.
These three events (the charter and 2 steam locomotives) served as the starting point for railroad development in the United States, which began fully in the late 1920s. The first railroads were fairly short and were built for industrial purposes (to haul ore from mines and mines).
In 1830, an event occurred that marked the beginning of the development of passenger transportation in the United States: in Maryland, the first passenger trains in the States began running between the cities of Baltimore and Ohio.
In the same year, Tom Thumb, a steam locomotive built by American Peter Cooper, and The Best Friend Of Charleston, built by the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company in West Point Foudry, New York, were designed for passenger service. The steam locomotive proved to be a reliable mode of transportation. Therefore, railroads began to compete directly with shipping.
However, the public regarded steam engines as “Sons of the Devil” and that traveling by them resulted in nothing but “concussion.”
But their advantage over steamships was indisputable. A vivid example is an experiment, or rather a competition, between a steam locomotive and a steamboat. The conditions of the competition were incredibly simple: to pass a certain route as quickly as possible. For this purpose, a route between the cities of Cincinnati and St. Louis was chosen. The distance by water was 702 miles and was covered by the steamer in 3 days. The steam engine took only 16 hours and the distance was only 339 miles!
This event was followed by intensive development of railroads in the United States: by 1838, 5 of 6 states in New England had a railroad service, and the limits of the spread of the railway network were defined by the borders of Kentucky and Indiana. The development of agriculture led to a boom in railroad construction. Because farms worked for the market from the beginning, modern railroads were needed to take their produce out. By 1840 the tracks were already 2,755 miles long! And before the Civil War, in 1860, more than 30,000 miles!
In 1846, one of the largest and oldest railroads in the United States, the Pennsylvania Railroad, began operating in the northeastern part of the United States. The first route ran between the cities of Philadelphia and Harrisburg, which was built by 1854.
However, the steam engine was not only used on railroads. For example, the first mechanical elevators had traction precisely from a steam engine, and were called “vertical railroads.” They were first installed and used in the United States in 1850.
The term “railroad” became very popular in American society. For example, abolitionists used the term in the 1850s in the United States for their own purposes: it was the name given to a secret organization (the “Underground Railroad”) whose activities included helping fugitive Negroes and “ferrying” them from the South to the Northern United States.
During the Civil War, for the first time, the railroads played an important role for the two conflicting sides, who used railroad transportation to deliver weapons, food, ammunition, and to move troops. And in 1862 President Abraham Lincoln signed the so-called Pacific Rairoad Act to complete the Transcontinental Railroad, which would connect California to the eastern states. Thus another railroad company was founded, the largest U.S. company today, which owns the largest network of railroads in the United States – the Union Pacific Railroad, located west of the Missouri River.
Around 1865, the “Golden Age” of railroading began in the United States. And on May 10, 1869, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific (this company was building railroads east of Socramento), met face to face at Cape Point in what is now Utah, marking the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States. Three more transcontinental lines were built: in 1881, 1882 and 1893.
An important result of railroad construction was the accumulation of capital by joint stock companies that contracted to build transcontinental roads. The history of U.S. railroad construction is a history of the mobilization of public resources and the country’s natural wealth in favor of a bunch of railroad magnates. Even before construction began, government subsidies were given to railroad companies at the rate of $16,000 to $48,000 for each mile of future track. The companies themselves determined the route and naturally tried to lengthen it as much as possible, as a result the railroads were extremely tortuous and had to be straightened afterwards. In addition, the companies were given ownership of the land for ten miles in each direction of the road to be laid. Thus, railroad owners were granted ownership of 242,000 square miles of land in 1870-1880. 242,000 square miles of land, while settlers under the Homestead Act (for that period) received only 65.
The railroad magnates extorted large subsidies and tracts of land from towns and counties, threatening to send the railroad past them otherwise. All this was only possible with the benevolent inaction of the state, which clearly displayed its class-based, bourgeois character.
In the 50 years from (1865-1916), railroad development took on a grand scale: the railroad network grew from 35,000 to 254,000 miles! By 1916, virtually 100 percent of in-state transportation (passenger and freight) was by rail.
During World War I, however, the U.S. federal government took control of the railroad industry. From this point on, the Golden Age of Railroading in the U.S. could be considered to be coming to an end. By 1920, the railroads had been taken back into private hands, but they were returned in a dilapidated condition and in need of drastic reconstruction and substantial improvement.
In 1920 the federal government passed the “Transportation Transportation Act,” the last stage in federal regulation. The “golden age” in U.S. railroad construction was over.
Railroad construction had important consequences. First, the infrastructure was created, finally linking the domestic market into a coherent whole. Second, railroad construction helped boost metallurgy and transportation engineering. This was especially evident when cast-iron rails began to be replaced by steel ones. Railroad construction placed so much demand on rails that, despite huge growth of metallurgy and high import duties, steel rails were still partially imported from England up to the 1990s.