History of rail transportation in the United States

Railroads played a large role in the development of the United States from the

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).^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

Although the antebellum South started early to build railways, it concentrated on short lines linking cotton regions to oceanic or river ports, and the absence of an interconnected network was a major handicap during the Civil War (1861–1865). The North and Midwest constructed networks that linked every city by 1860 before the war. In the heavily settled Midwestern Corn Belt, over 80 percent of farms were within 5 miles (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

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 254,251 miles (409,177 km) in 1916 and fell to 139,679 miles (224,792 km) in 2011.^[6]

Early period (to 1860)

The

In 1826 Massachusetts incorporated Quincy's Granite Railway as a common freight carrier^[13] 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

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.^[14]: 90

Steam locomotives

The

The B&O started developing steam locomotives in 1829 with Peter Cooper's Tom Thumb.^[15] 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.^[14]: 96 Many of the earliest locomotives for American railroads were imported from England, including the Stourbridge Lion and the John Bull, but a domestic locomotive manufacturing industry was quickly established, with locomotives like the DeWitt Clinton being built in the 1830s.^[16] The B&O's westward route reached the Ohio River in 1852, the first eastern seaboard railroad to do so.^[17]: Ch.V

By 1850, 9,000 miles (14,000 km) of railroad lines had been built.^[18]

Land grants

The federal government operated a

Railroads soon replaced many canals and turnpikes and by the 1870s had significantly displaced steamboats as well.^[21] 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.^[22]

Changing style of travel

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.^[23]

Networks

Railroad companies in the North and Midwest constructed networks that linked nearly every major city by 1860. In the heavily settled Corn Belt (from Ohio to Iowa), over 80 percent of farms were within 5 miles (8.0 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.

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.^[27]

Civil War and Reconstruction (1861–1877)

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.^[28][29]

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.^[30] 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.^[31] 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.^[32] 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

During the

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.^[40] 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.^[41][42]

On January 12, 1883, the southern section of the second transcontinental railroad line was completed as the

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.[43]^: 352–96 Congress responded by enacting antitrust legislation to prohibit monopolies of railroads (and other industries), beginning with the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890.^[45]

The

James J. Hill joined forces with Morgan and others to gain control of the Northern Pacific. Hill formed the

In 1901 the Union Pacific Railroad acquired all of the stock of the Southern Pacific. The federal government charged UP with violating the Sherman Act, and in 1913 the Supreme Court ordered UP to divest itself of all SP stock.^[46] 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.^[47] (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

US railroads were at their peak length of trackage in 1916 with 254,037 miles (408,833 km) of tracks.[51]

Nationalized management (1917–1920)

The

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.[54] 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.^[53]

During the 1920s the railroad industry, with its rates and routes continuing to be set by the ICC, was facing increasing competition from other modes of transportation: trucking and airplanes. These competing modes were basically unregulated at the time; this competition was not acknowledged in the railroad legislation. The newer transport modes also received extensive financial assistance from government, such as in the construction of highways and rural roads, and the construction of airports. The competition contributed to the railroads' eventual decline in the 1920s and beyond, and which was amplified in the 1930s during the Great Depression.^{[55]: 356–362  [37]: 192–196}

In 1929 the ICC published its proposed Complete Plan of Consolidation, also known as the "Ripley Plan," after its author, William Z. Ripley of Harvard University.^[56][57] 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.^[58] In 1940 Congress formally abandoned the Ripley Plan.^[59]

Modern era (1946–present)

During the

In 1966, Congress created the Federal Railroad Administration, to issue and enforce rail safety regulations, administer railroad assistance programs, and conduct research and development in support of improved railroad safety and national rail transportation policy. The safety functions were transferred from the ICC. The FRA was established as part of the new federal Department of Transportation.^[60]

Two of the largest remaining railroads, the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central, merged in 1968 to form the

In addition to freight railroads, Conrail inherited commuter rail operations from several predecessor railroads in the northeast, and these operations continued to be unprofitable. State and local government transportation agencies took over the passenger operations and acquired the various rights-of-way from Conrail in 1983, pursuant to the Northeast Rail Service Act of 1981.^[65][64][66] To replace the loss of commuter passenger rail service outside of the northeast region, state and local agencies established their own commuter systems in several metropolitan areas, generally by leasing rail lines from Amtrak or freight railroads.^[67]

The

Beginning in the late 1970s Amtrak eliminated several of its lightly traveled lines. Ridership stagnated at roughly 20 million passengers per year amid uncertain government aid from 1981 to about 2000.^[68][69] Ridership increased during the first decade of the 21st century after implementation of capital improvements in the Northeast Corridor and rises in automobile fuel costs.

Resurgence of freight railroads in the 1980s

In 1980 Congress enacted the

• Union Pacific acquired the Missouri Pacific and Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad in the 1980s, the Chicago and North Western in 1995, and the Southern Pacific
  in 1996
• Chessie System and the Seaboard System
• BNSF Railway was formed in 1996 from the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe (the "Santa Fe") and Burlington Northern
• Norfolk Southern was formed in 1982 from the Norfolk and Western and Southern Railway
• Canadian Pacific acquired the Delaware and Hudson in 1991
• Canadian National acquired the Illinois Central in 1999
• CSX and Norfolk Southern acquired most of the Conrail freight rail assets in 1997.^[64]

In 1995, when most of the ICC's powers had been eliminated, Congress finally abolished the agency and transferred its remaining functions to a new agency, the Surface Transportation Board.^[71]

21st century

In the early 21st century, several of the railroads, along with the federal government and various port agencies, began to reinvest in freight rail infrastructure, such as intermodal terminals and bridge and tunnel improvements. These projects are designed to increase capacity and efficiency across the national rail network.^[72][73] Two examples are the Heartland Corridor and the National Gateway.

Both the

In 2015 construction began on the California High-Speed Rail line. The Phase I portion, which would link Los Angeles and San Francisco in under three hours, was originally projected to be completed in 2029 at a cost of $40 billion.^[74] By 2018 however, the project experienced numerous delays and cost miscalculations, with an estimated completion date of 2033 and a cost of $98.1 billion.^[75]

Technology

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.^[14]: 208 Following the B&O example, U.S. railroad companies soon became self-sufficient, as thousands of domestic machine shops turned out products and thousands of inventors and tinkerers improved the equipment.

Rail manufacturing

In general, U.S. railroad companies imported technology from Britain in the 1830s, particularly

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.^[80]

Track gauge

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

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,^[82] followed by Lima and Alco later in the 19th and 20th centuries.^[83]

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.^{[37]: 213–14} Several companies developed fast streamliner trains, such as the Super Chief and the California Zephyr during the 1930s and 1940s. Their locomotives used either diesel or similar internal combustion engine designs. See Dieselisation in North America.

Though

Early forms of American railroad signaling and communication were virtually non-existent; the railroads initially managed their train operations using timetables. However, there was no means of timely communication between engineers and dispatchers, and occasionally two trains inadvertently would be sent on a collision course, or "cornfield meet."

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.^[89] 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

As railroads expanded after the Civil War, so too did the rate of accidents among railroad personnel, especially

Congress added railroad worker safety laws throughout the 20th century.[92]^: 16–25 Significant among this legislation is the Federal Railroad Safety Act of 1970, which gave the FRA broad responsibilities over all aspects of rail safety, and expanded the agency's authority to cover all railroads, both interstate and intrastate.^[97]

Impact on American economy and society

According to historian Henry Adams the system of railroads needed:

the energies of a generation, for it required all the new machinery to be created—capital, banks, mines, furnaces, shops, power-houses, technical knowledge, mechanical population, together with a steady remodelling of social and political habits, ideas, and institutions to fit the new scale and suit the new conditions. The generation between 1865 and 1895 was already mortgaged to the railways, and no one knew it better than the generation itself.^[98] The impact can be examined through five aspects: shipping, finance, management, careers, and popular reaction.^[99]

Shipping freight and passengers

First they provided a highly efficient network for shipping freight and passengers across a large national market. The result was a transforming impact on most sectors of the economy including manufacturing, retail and wholesale, agriculture and finance. Supplemented with the Telegraph that added rapid communications, the United States now had an integrated national market practically the size of Europe, with no internal barriers or tariffs, all supported by a common language, and financial system and a common legal system. The railroads at first supplemented, then largely replaced the previous transportation modes of turnpikes and canals, rivers and intracoastal ocean traffic. 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.^[100] In the late 19th century pipelines were built for the oil trade, and in the 20th century trucking and aviation emerged.^[101][102]

Basis of the private financial system

Railroads financing provided the basis of the private (non-governmental) financial system. Construction of railroads was far more expensive than factories or canals. The famous Erie canal, 300 miles (480 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).^[103] Funding came from financiers throughout the Northeast, and from Europe, especially Britain.^[104] 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.^[105] 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.^[106] In 1914–1917, they liquidated their American assets to pay for war supplies.^{[107][108][109]}

Inventing modern management

The third dimension was in designing complex managerial systems that could handle far more complicated simultaneous relationships that could be dreamed of by the local factory owner who could patrol every part of his own factory in a matter of hours. Civil engineers became the senior management of railroads. The leading innovators were the Western Railroad of Massachusetts and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in the 1840s, the Erie in the 1850s and the Pennsylvania in the 1860s.^[110]

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.^[111] 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.^[42]

Career paths

The fourth dimension was in management of the workforce, both blue-collar workers and white-collar workers. Railroading became a career in which young men entered at about age 18 to 20, and spent their entire lives usually with the same line. Young men could start working on the tracks, become a fireman, and work his way up to the engineer. The mechanical world of the roundhouses have their own career tracks. A typical career path would see a young man hired at age 18 as a shop laborer, be promoted to skilled mechanic at age 24, brakeman at 25, freight conductor at 27, and passenger conductor at age 57. Women were not hired.^[112]

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.^[113] 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.^[114]

Early attitudes towards railroads

Boosters in every city worked feverishly to make sure the railroad came through, knowing their urban dreams depended upon it. The mechanical size, scope and efficiency of the railroads made a profound impression; people would dress in their Sunday best to go down to the terminal to watch the train come in. David Nye argues that:

The startling introduction of railroads into this agricultural society provoked a discussion that soon arrived at the enthusiastic consensus that railways were sublime and that they would help to unify, dignify, expand and enrich the nation. They became part of the public celebrations of Republicanism. The rhetoric, the form, and the central figures of civic ceremonies changed to accommodate the intrusion of this technology... [Between 1828 and 1869] Americans integrated the railroad into the national economy and enfolded it within the sublime.^[115]

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.^[116]

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.

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.[119] 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.^[120] Anti-railroad complaints were loudly repeated in late 19th century political rhetoric.^[121] The idea of establishing a strong rate fixing federal body was achieved during the Progressive Era, primarily by a coalition of shipping interests.^[122] 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.^[123] After 1910 the lines faced an emerging trucking industry to compete with for freight, and automobiles and buses to compete for passenger service.^{[55]: 348–64}

Environmental history of railways

Railways also disrupted the natural tendencies of the environment through an increased capacity for transportation. Railroads throughout the United States allowed quicker, more efficient transport of goods and people that were previously unavailable. Agriculture, animals, soldiers, goods, and natural resources were now able to move large distances in much shorter amounts of time. As a result, things that were not harvested before like certain tracts of arable land or animal populations were now being used.

Impact on buffalo population

During the first half of the 19th century, herds of

As a result of the rapidly declining bison population, economic opportunities arose through the creation of jobs.[125] Men acquired jobs hunting and skinning bison on the plains, as well as maintaining railroad infrastructure used to transport the valuable bison hides.

Railroads in popular culture

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.^[126][127]

Historiography

There is no question about the importance of railroads in American history. Churella finds that back in the 1950s business and economic historians, led by

"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."[129]^[130]

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.^[131][132] 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.^[131]

Railroad active mileage by region

Source: United States Census Bureau, Report on Transportation Business in the United States at the Eleventh Census 1890, pg. 4.

See also

• History of rail transport
• American business history
• Confederate railroads in the American Civil War
• High-speed rail in the United States
• History of rail transport in Canada
• History of rapid transit#North America
• History of the Union Pacific Railroad
• Oldest railroads in North America
• Rail transport in Mexico#History
• Rail transportation in the United States
• Railroad land grants in the United States
• Railroad brotherhoods
  • List of American railway unions
  • Great Railroad Strike of 1877
  • Great Southwest railroad strike of 1886
  • Great Railroad Strike of 1922
  • 1992 United States railroad strike
• Railroads in New England
• Timeline of United States railway history
• Track gauge in the United States

References