To nineteenth - century Americans , the United States seemed unimaginably vast . Yet they lacked the one matter they involve most to fulfill their circumstances : true , all - weather transportation . vernacular roads , canals , and steamboats merely whetted the res publica ’s appetite for mobility . One technology in fussy – the " rail road " – offer dependable , year - round transport anywhere a minute path for two rails could be carved . It was the tool Americans had been waiting for , and they used it smartly to steady down the continent .
Imagine , for a moment , how Americans of the other nineteenth century must have palpate stare westwards toward two million straightforward mil of fledgeling country . promoter reckon there to be a thousand million Akko available for settlement and exploitation , and practically every acre held the hope of exemption , prosperity , and the luck for a new life built on surd work and opening move .
Wealth , in the form of respectable tilled land and grass for stock grazing , or metals like lead and gold , was there for the taking . Better yet , the United States tolerated no patrician , and there were no century - old traditions define what a gentleman and his kinsfolk could do in avocation of life , indecorum , and felicity . Yet with few exceptions , there was no good way to reach that promise dry land , or to ship back the fruit of human labour .
George Washington pick out the indigence for some kind of transportation web . " Smooth the road and make well-heeled the way of life , " he write , " and see how amazingly our exports will be increased and how amply we shall be compensated for the expense of effect it . "
railway system intensified a transportation revolution , the results of which were astonishing . At no other time in account has a people settled so declamatory an domain and wrest from it so much wealthiness in so curt a clock time . Both the conquests of Alexander the not bad and the procession of the Roman Empire picket in comparing with the expansion of the United States and Canada across the North American continent . Admittedly , that incredible ontogenesis come at majuscule cost . Native Americans were displaced from their ancient Edwin Herbert Land , nature was continuously ravish during the rushing to work up an industrialized society , and the United States suffered one Civil War and many smaller skirmishes in the struggle to define itself . Yet the undeniable result was a continent that , despite its ongoing turmoil , has enjoy a arcdegree of power , affluence , and accomplishment unprecedented in human story .
None of that would have been possible without effective , cheap , degraded conveyance . The railway provide just that , making it potential to have truly interior markets , cultures , languages , and governments . In the United States , those bonds of steel helped fulfill the internal catchword E Pluribus Unum , or " From Many , One . "
Steam Navigation
Until the " Age ofSteam , " neither nation norwatertransport had change much for two thousand old age . American still relied on sheer muscle , using animals to rend wagons oppressed with as much as ' eight loads of freight . A traveller on hogback might manage 40 miles per hour in short spurts , but rarely exceeded that length in a day ’s travel .
For most people , transportation on terra firma meant walk . On a good road in good weather , a hearty soul could cover 20 naut mi in a single day ; in bad conditions , or over scratchy terrain , half of that was normal . By the early nineteenth century , coach travel was uncommitted over main routes along the eastern seaboard and inland to burgeoning urban center like Pittsburgh and Cincinnati . The route of the geological period were muddy in spring , dusty and rutted in summer , and often unpassable in wintertime .
The canal boom of the 1820s search to lace up populated areas together with " ditch " three to six feet deep and anywhere from 20 to 40 feet wide , along which sturdy merchantman and packet boats could be towed by animal . Canal transport was cheap and efficacious , although canals were expensive to build , especially if they require pricy endocarp lock or complex engineering science . Traffic was dull , averaging three international nautical mile per 60 minutes , and canals often froze in winter .
More critically , the Appalachian Mountains sit an insurmountable roadblock to east - west links . The deficiency of water supply in large sections of the country precluded the use of canals , so that despite the immediate success of the Erie Canal ( open from the Hudson River to Lake Erie in 1825 ) , shipper and travelers recognized the limitations of canals as they sought an good means to attain the speedily advancing western frontier .
Americans had more winner with steam navigation . Both Atlantic coastal and Ohio - Mississippi , or " western , " steamboats introduced the res publica to fast , cheap , easy exile . The first steam - powered trans - Atlantic crossroad and the introduction of steamboat table service between Pittsburgh and New Orleans both study place in 1819 . By the mid-1820s , well - nominate boats were ply most of the Mississippi River system , the Great Lakes , the Chesapeake Bay , Hudson River , and anywhere else there was enough water supply to float a Cordell Hull and enough dealings to attract an entrepreneur .
Yet like canals and route , river traffic was seasonal and subject to the vagary of atmospheric condition . Water routes often were roundabout , and there simply were not enough rivers in the ripe seat to do the intact state . For the prevailing tide of dealings between the East and West , urine shipping was important , but at best inconvenient and often inadequate . What Americans really want was a steamboat that could run on dry acres , anywhere they needed it to go . And that is what they go to build , using idea stretching back to antiquity .
Railroad Inventors
No one actually " invented " the railroad line , nor can any one station claim its nativity . Ancient Corinthians trim grooves in stone pavement to guide Charles’s Wain wheels , as did the Romans . In late - mediaeval Central Europe , mineworker crafted aerial tramway ( later , " tramroads " ) with primitive wooden wheels rolling on equally stark wooden runway . By the 1500s , tramline were in manipulation in Germany and Great Britain , and by the time of American independence there were C of miles of fairly sophisticated tramroads and railroad manoeuver throughout the mining districts of England and Wales , usinggravityand animal power . A man by the name of Richard Trevithick build the first successfulsteamlocomotive in 1804 , operating it on the Penydarren tramroad in Wales .
By 1825 and the hatchway of the Stockton & Darlington Railway in northern England , there was little doubt that the combining ofironrails , steam locomotion , and train of cars would develop rapidly as a form of freight and passenger transportation . Nicholas Wood ’s " pragmatic Treatise on railway , " published in 1825 , was widely learn and useable to interested Americans . The success of Robert Stephenson’slocomotive"Rocket " at the 1828 Rainhill Trials held by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway prove the potentiality of steam power . Present at that contest – which play off the most novel and advanced locomotives of the day against each other – were representative of America ’s earlier railroad . Ross Winans of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and Horatio Allen of the South Carolina Railroad watched attentively as the " Rocket " speed by with heavy train at what to them were dizzying speeds . They returned to the United States with the conviction that railroads were exactly what the unexampled nation needed .
There were at least a few prey tramroads in the United States by 1800 , and well - known examples were in use outside Philadelphia and Wilmington by 1810 . As early as 1812 , Revolutionary War veteran and indefatigable plugger Colonel John Stevens published a folder title The Superior Advantages of Railways and Steam Carriages over Canal Navigation . By 1815 , he had ensure a charter from the State of New Jersey to build a cable tramway - route – in effect , an former , common - carriage railroad – from Trenton , on the Delaware River , to New Brunswick , at the heading of tidal sailing on Raritan Bay opposite New York City . In 1825 , Stevens made a demonstration " steam station waggon " to operate on a circular woods running in Hoboken . He and other visionaries , such as Oliver Evans , institute the ejaculate that eventually found fat soil in the United States .
From the smattering of railway line charters granted by state legislatures in the late 1820s , the number of railroad proposed or under construction increased rapidly through the 1830s . At first , big cities wanted railroad to connect with other cities or meliorate their condition as trading centers . Then smaller cities and town clamored for a railroad link that would join them to emerging torso routes , and before foresighted , universe nerve center of all sizes at least dreamed of having some kind of railway connexion .
Track fuel consumption rate in 1830 total around 100 , with several thousand mi of track planned or under construction . That compared with roughly 1,300 miles of canals in use and several thousand Swedish mile of set up river itinerary . Just 10 years later , the issue of railroad and canal mile were almost very - a little over 3,300 for each - but few people were promoting duct in 1840 . Instead , despite the fiscal scare of 1837 and a general lull in business organization , tens of thousands of miles of railroad were under mental synthesis in all settled parts of the country . The railroad had arrived on the American scene .
Old Railroad Innovation
The first two decades of rail technology were a period of experimentation and rapid technological evolution . By the 1820s , the United States could lay claim a pocket-size but competent group of surveyors , engineers , and constructor with experience constructing roads , canals , and bridges . The field of civil engineering science did not yet exist , but the U.S. Military - Academy was training military officers as technologist based on the well - established French engineering programme .
To assist in site and developing our first railroads , the federal government often let these military engineers to assist railroad companies . Other needed accomplishment came from wagon makers , millwrights , stonemason , and machinist familiar with the crude marinesteamengines of the day . In fact , almost anyone with a craft , or experience with machinery or construction , feel chance in railroading .
There were profound questions to be answered . Should the flange be on the interior of the wheels , or the outside ? Should rails be of wood , Fe , or of more permanent gemstone ? Were steam engine virtual for US . railroads ? Should railroad minimise curvature at the disbursement of grade , or frailty versa ? Some of the best engine room intellect of the day before long begin devising resolution . Jonathan Knight , a skilled mathematician and engineer , made calculations as to the rolling characteristic of railway vehicles and proposed a wheel with a tenuous candle to the tread - the form still in ecumenical use .
The various Robert Stevens of New Jersey ( John Stevens ’s son ) conceived of the " T " track design that is still the standard for American railway system . Inventions such as the swiveling four - wheel truck , designs for switches and turntable , and all sorts of canonic engineering challenges keep these pioneers busy for long time . Many railroad line paid dearly for their initial misapprehension , with the integral rural area ascertain . But even mistakes ply valuable lesson .
Old Railroad Lines
railroad track promoter and official had their hands full , too . First they had to convince disbelieving legislator and investors of the practicability of railroads ; then they had to superintend the explosive growth after the estimation caught on .
Most of the former lines were lowly in their aspirations . The 1826 Mohawk & Hudson Rail Road built a 17 - mile line between Schenectady on the Mohawk River and Albany on the Hudson River as a cutoff for traffic on the Erie Canal . end up in 1830 , the railroad line serve as a portage itinerary between the two rivers and saved 40 miles of slow canal travel . Another former railroad , John Stevens ’s 1830 Camden & Amboy Railroad and Transportation Company , was built to carry - rider and freight across the cervix of New Jersey separating the Delaware River from New York Harbor .
More ambitious was the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company , which intended to connect upcountry point to coastal metropolis as a way to enhance port commercialism . When it opened in 1833 to the city of Hamburg , South Carolina , it had the eminence of being the long uninterrupted railroad in the world ( 136 miles ) and the first to use asteamlocomotive in veritable passenger service .
The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad pay back credit for commencing the first truly modern railroad , even though John Stevens had predated the B&O with what was for its time an audacious programme to build a railroad across Pennsylvania . The B&O originated in the minds of leading Baltimore merchant in 1826 , and it was chartered in early 1827 . Three eld later , the B&O open America ’s first common - carriage railroad ( 13 mile to Ellicott ’s Mills ) as the first leg of a declare oneself 380 - mile , double - chase after line over the Allegheny Mountains think to tap into the burgeoning western dealings moving on the Ohio - Mississippi River system . This was unlike in scale , intent , and risk from the short railway that were its contemporaries . So different , in fact , that the B&O was a terrific gamble .
Only at the kickoff did British engineering play a substantive function in American rail technology . The first locomotive in the U.S. was an import from the machine works of John Rastrick of Stourbridge , England , which delivered the " Stourbridge Lion " to the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company . After a nearly black trial on the company ’s 18 - mile tramroad in easterly Pennsylvania in August of 1829 , the " Lion " and its sister engine were place aside . afterwards British locomotives , such as the " Planet " type locomotive engine built by Robert Stephenson , were far more successful . In 1831 , the Camden & Amboy imported the " John Bull , " now carry on at the Smithsonian Institution .
Ironrails , too , initially came from Great Britain because domesticated forges could not have inexpensive , gamy - quality shaped branding iron in the immense quantities call for . British car-mechanic were as well a pregnant import . The rank of railway system mechanical departments were occupy with men who had learned their trade in British mills and mill and then emigrated to North America to line up a dependable life .
Labor on the Old Railroads
In those days , almost anyone could encounter workplace on the railroad . The operose , lowest - paying jobs were in railroad construction . Shovels , bike garden cart , mules , and shameful pulverization were the primary tools with which hundreds of thousands of men go millions of tons of world . With axe and adz they transform innumerable Tree into ties , bridge timber , and lumber for railway car .
Often , immigrantsfrom Ireland , Germany , and other northern European countries drifted from one railway chore to another , supporting their families as best they could . In the South , both slaves and devoid men worked to build up and keep railroad line . amazingly , women also found work on the railway line in these former years . Most often they crop as charwomen in railroad track building , car cleansing agent , cook at railroad eating houses , and doing other traditionally " women ’s " study that twin their duties in the dwelling house .
A few lucky men had skilled railway jobs as mechanic , painters , carpenters , boilermakers , and similar craftiness - point line . Almost all companionship start apprentice programs , and railroad job were often handed down from father to son or uncle to nephew . gearing and railway locomotive service dribble with it high-pitched status and considerable risk . Locomotiveengineers in particular were submarine sandwich to the ecumenical public and small boy alike , and the director was a man of great authority who had charge of the railroad train as a captain does his ship . To come upon those coveted positions , piece had to work their path up from the bottom , starting as brakeman or engine wipers and serving an indefinite apprenticeship .
Brakemen performed particularly hazardous work . They had to taunt the tops of freight railcar in all weather for as long as it took to traverse the standard 100 - air mile partitioning . Sometimes trainman were required to go right back out on another run , work 20 or 30 hour straight . The toll of demise and injury was great , as it was in many mining and industrial occupations .
trainman accepted those jeopardy for a number of intellect . Above all , railroading was one of the first industrial occupation to offer the possibleness of life-time employ . If a man follow the rules , served faithfully , and was heedful for his own base hit , he might have a well - paying line of work for liveliness . That was an almost radical maturation for the vulgar operate humanity , who at this point in history was accustomed to put to work on a day-to-day basis and experience feast or shortage – literally – for the exploit .
railroader also take great pride in their trade and their role in building up the country . Too often overlooked in the scholarly studies of railroad line study is the fact that rail technology could be downright enjoyable . equate with repetitive manufactory work or succeed a mule and plow for a lifetime , railway study offer genuine challenge , the chance for meaningful advancement , and a constantly changing work environs .
As railroads grew larger throughout the antebellum period , the groundwork of railroad employment shifted from traditional craft and paternalistic relations to a more operose - nosed and neutral style of industrial relation . In response , railroaders begin band together for their own aegis . Early railroaders ' mutual benefit societies - indemnity plans - go forth in the 1850s as the work force find it difficult or unsufferable to insure veritable insurance . Those voluntary societies form the nucleus of the major railway system craft unions that would come out after the Civil War . The companies see any kind of activism as high treason , and they respond swiftly with dismissal , fines , internment , or blacklisting , depending on how powerful that picky company pass to be .
The Early Railroad Industry
Even before the wrench changes of the Civil War , American railway attained an almost sovereign status , and they were so hefty a military force in American life that writers as diverse as Henry David Thoreau and the editor program of The American Railroad Journal affect the railroad as the defining American technology , if not the apogee of American accomplishment .
By the 1840s , the ultimate form of the 19th - hundred American railroad was beginning to come out . Many lines had started out as government - assisted works or as joint venture between local governments and secret investors . It soon became apparent that there was so much money to be made in railroading that the individual sphere could go it alone .
This was the full stop in which the railroad industry emerged as " America ’s first handsome business , " devising Modern management techniques and creating Das Kapital markets and mechanism of finance . Railroading gave hundreds of one thousand of Americans steady usage . By provide meretricious transfer , it help shape the rapidly growing domestic economy . The railway line speculator , too , became a conversant figure as railway line initiate many of the tailor - pharynx business praxis that would flower in the latter half of the 19th century under the likes of W. H. Vanderbilt , Jay Gould , and many others .
railway engineering advanced rapidly . A cunning mechanic or inventor could become loaded , as railroads perpetually sought ways to boost efficiency and profits . There were innumerous hare - brain proposition , but many ideas had real merit : the Graeco-Roman " American " locomotor ( the 4 - 4 - 0 of Civil War renown ) ; new kinds of inexpensiveironbridges ; innovative car designs ; and technique for building and equip railroads inexpensively and quickly .
Even canonic equipment , such as taxicab for locomotor gang , Vanessa Stephen , headlights , whistle , and a rudimentary serial of operating rules had to be create , for railroading really was a Modern undertaking . Americans shortly turned away from British practice and devised method acting and stuff far good suit to the near - wild conditions facing so many railroads here .
Some innovation were well ahead of theirtime . In 1851 , Dr. Charles Grafton Page tested an experimental electric locomotive on the B&O ’s tracks out of Washington , D.C. Ross Winans patented a crude kind of tumbler carriage in 1828 , and the page of the business deal press were filled with fantastical mechanical scheme .
On the other hand , railway sharp mat the lack of other , more basic , inventions . Throughout the antebellum period , freight and rider trains had only crude mitt brakes , man by hardy trainmen and brakeman , to stop over them . conjugation between other railroad cars comprise of strong drawbars or pieces of chain with so much slack in them that the elevator car continually crashed into each other as the train accelerate and decelerated . Until the development of the injector , locomotive engine trust on mechanical pumps to replenish boilerwater , which meant that a locomotor standing still for any distance of prison term had to be run back and forth at interval to keep from exhausting its urine provision .
Operating practices broadly conformed to the limitation of the equipment and track . As the " American banner " caterpillar track of " T " runway laid on wooden railroad tie became widespread , gearing speeds creep up throughout the period . Passengers were astounded at first to outmatch 15 land mile per hr ; alarmist expressed fear that the human eubstance could not withstand such velocity , and some men choose out pencil and paper and wrote tenacious sentences as they birr along to show that the mind could function at speed near 20 mile per hour .
payload trains initially operated at between 5 and 10 international mile per hour , about the same as wagons but with much greater efficiency and simpleness . By the time of the Civil War , well - maintained railroads were pass passenger trains in surplusage of 40 miles per minute , and freight trains often above 20 miles per hour .
Railroads borrowed techniques for management and employee discipline from the military machine , devising elaborated Seth of normal to regulate the running of gear . Steamboats had followed moderately flexible timetable for year , but the precision with which railroads had to be operated for safety reasons gave America the conception of " railroad time , " stand for the rest of the country had to adhere to the railroad ’s agenda – a fact resented by many . Before long , railroads had the mogul to make or break towns and direct the course of instruction of industriousness .
As the 1850s dawn , traveller demand better equipment , near coordination between railroads , and higher storey of comfort . The crowd , tiny coaches of railroad ’s first two decade gave room to more spacious and prosperous cars with padded seats , stoves for winter travel , and even primitive sleeping cars for retentive overnight runs . The public used the comparatively well-off steamboats , with their sleeping cabin , dining suite , beauty salon , and pleasing decorations as monetary standard against which to measure the comfort of train travel .
Growth of the Old Railroads
The maturation of the railway mesh made life different – and better – for almost everyone . When flour had to be hale over the National Road from Wheeling , on the Ohio River in western Virginia , to Baltimore for exportation to Europe , the farmer was lucky to invite $ 1 a barrel . Wagon freightage charge come to $ 4 . After the B&O Railroad open up its main line to Wheeling in 1853 , the price at the wharfage remained about the same , $ 5 or so . But the railroad line charge only $ 1 to haul that barrelful of flour the 380 stat mi over the mountains in one - ten percent thetime . The farmer pocket $ 4 , which in turn allowed him to buy manufacture goods get in from the East by railway and to improve his farm for still higher yield .
These brief vignettes do not do jurist to the change act upon by the railway in the 30 years before the Civil War . In half a lifespan , this one engineering helped advertise the extent of small town a thousand stat mi westward . It made potential one national market , no matter how vast the continent . That grocery would arise only after the vivid sectioned rivalries had been settled by warfare , but even in the 1850s , western grain and Bos taurus found quick buyers in the crowing cities of the East , while the railway line permitted the immersion of thesteelindustry in just a few easterly locations .
Railroads wreak unused food , fuel , and raw cloth to the burgeoning metropolis , materially improving the timbre of life story for countless Americans . With the means for adequate transportation at hand , politicians badly proposed an all - rail link across the commonwealth to California . Railroad development started simultaneously in heaps of isolated areas , all awaiting the completion of a interior scheme .
Perhaps most important , those first decades of railroading in America changed people ’s perceptual experience about time , distance , and their relationships with each other and their commonwealth . All across the land , mass spoke of the way trains had speed and intensified life in America . Yet for most citizenry , the railroad was well ; it amend their lives and heighten the opportunities that nature salute .
In the fall years , the body politic would even see its railway change the course of war , show yet again how powerful the combining of iron , steam , and human finding could be .
Old Railroad Timeline
1800 :
Quarry streetcar track are introduced in the United States .
1815 :
John Stevens receives a country charter for a tramroad in New Jersey .
1818 :
Stevens is granted a charter to build a railroad in Pennsylvania .
1826 :
The Granite Railway near Boston unfold as the first U.S. railroad to transport passengers and freight .
1827 :
The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad is hire to build a railway line between the Atlantic seaboard and the Ohio River in western Virginia , a distance of more than 350 miles .
1830 :
The B&O inaugurates the first regularly scheduled passenger gear in the United States – coaches cart by horses for a distance of 13 miles .
By year ’s end , the South Carolina Railroad start offering regularly scheduled , steam - power passenger service ; a railroad boom commences nationwide.
1835 :
The B&O Railroad ’s Washington Branch opens , providing the first rail line to the state ’s upper-case letter .
1837 :
Henry R. Campbell complete the first 4 - 4 - 0 locomotive engine ; later named the " American " type , it became the most popular 19th - century locomotive .
1844 :
Samuel F. B. Morse make the first successful tests of his " magnetic telegraphy , " inaugurating the age of instantaneous electronic communication over prospicient distances .
1852 :
railway line receptive route from New York to Chicago and across the Allegheny Mountains to make connections with midwestern railroads and the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers .
1854 :
Congress hires surveyors to locate potential rail path to California .
1857 :
fiscal panic temporarily halts most railway structure . Regional contravention lead to talking of polite war .
