Essay on Early Railroads: The First Big Business

In the second half of the 1800 's, the railroad, which was invented in England,

“If any act symbolized the taming of the Northwest frontier, it was the driving of the final spike to complete the nation’s first transcontinental railroad.”1 The first railroad west of the Mississippi River was opened on December 23, 1852. Five miles long, the track ran from St. Louis to Cheltanham, Missouri. Twenty-five years prior, there were no railroads in the United States; twenty-five years later, railroads joined the east and west coasts from New York to San Francisco.2

At first, overland travel was slow and expensive, and the west was isolated from the rest of the nation. Canals, steamboats, and railroads began to appear, resulting in faster travel, cheaper transport, and greater economic growth. The Erie Canal, completed in 1825, connected New York City to the Great Lakes. It cut the trip time from twenty days to six days and made it much cheaper to ship goods, which later inspired many new canal projects. Additionally, steam engines used the steam produced by boiling water to drive machinery. They were developed as a new source of power in the early 1700s and improved by James Watt in 1765 to be used in factories and for transportation. In 1807, Robert Fulton used the idea of steam power to built one of the first boats powered by a steam engine. These steamboats could travel against the wind and against river currents, increased the speed and lowered the costs of river travel and shipping, and opened up the South and West to more travel and trade. Furthermore, in the 1830s, railroads were developed. Steampowered locomotives pulled trains of cars. Travel by train was faster than travel by horse and trains carried more cargo than other land transportation did. Thus, railroads could be built where there were no rivers. Before long, railroads spread rapidly across the United States and the miles of railroad tracks increased from 3,000 miles in 1840 to 30,000 in 1860. They were concentrated in the North, made shipping cheaper and faster, linked the East and the West, and helped industry

The 1800’s were a period of technological rapid growth and change for America. The Industrial Revolution was in full force, and new advances were made in substantial numbers. One of these breakthroughs was the steam engine powered locomotive, which was first used in 1830. Railroads were built all over the east coast and encouraged travel and commerce among cities east of the Missouri River. By 1850, there were almost 9,000 miles of railroad tracks on the east coast, but very little on the west coast. In 1862, Abraham Lincoln passed the Pacific Railroad Act, which permitted the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads to begin building the transcontinental railroad. The Central Pacific Railroad would begin building in Sacramento, and the

Before railroads were ever implemented into American society, there was another form of primary transportation. In the early 1800s, goods and passengers were carried by ships. For some time, boats on rivers, lakes, and the ocean proved to be adequate enough to convey freight and people where it needed to go. However, these methods of transportation often posed problems of being too slow and too inconvenient. First appearing in the 1830s, the railroad business grew and in 1869, the transcontinental railroad was completed, allowing people to think about more efficient settlement across the country. Railroads were the fountainhead of American expansion because they provided for town and city creation and development across the entire United States.

The Transcontinental Railroad was one of the most ambitious engineering projects, economic stimulants, and efficient methods of transportation in the early United States. If completed, the United States would be truly be united from east to west. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Transcontinental Railroad helped develop new opportunities for many aspects of American life.

Imagine yourself sleeping soundly and you awake suddenly to the sounds chuggachuggachuggachugga CHOO CHOO! You realize it was only the train passing by, and you roll over to sleep longer. You have done this many times without even the thought of where trains originated. The train was first invented in 1830, but it did not truly flourish until the Gilded Age. Prior to the Gilded Age, only approximately 45,000 miles of track had been laid, and between 1871 and 1900 170,000 miles were added. This was all done with the help of Congress . In 1862, Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act, which authorized the construction of a transcontinental railroad. The first transcontinental railroad was completed on May 10, 1869. Four additional transcontinental

The transcontinental Railroad was completed on May 10, 1869. It had started in 1830 and took almost 4 decades to finish. By 1850 the track was about 9,000 miles long east of the Missouri River. At about the same time many people were moving west. It was a dangerous path over mountains, rivers, and deserts. Before the Transcontinental Railroad it cost almost $1,000 ($31,250.00 in 2015) to travel across the country, after the railroad it cost only $100 ($4,687.50 in

In addition with the invention of the steam engine came the steam locomotive. As the development of steam engines progressed through the 18th century, various attempts were made to apply them to road and railway us. In 1812 Matthew Murray was the first to build a successful steam locomotive, and it hauled 27 carts of around 95 tonnes at 3 mph. Accompanied with this came Richard Trevithick’s 40 psi steam locomotive, The Penydarren Locomotive, “the world's first ever railway journey that ran 9 miles from the ironworks at Penydarren to the Merthyr-Cardiff Canal, South Wales.” This creation lead to many more innovations, which will lead to speedy land travel for goods and products.

The railroad system created by Colonel John Stevens advanced American society the most during the industrial revolution. I know this because it helped bring goods from different places to people quicker and people could travel easier and less expensive. According to the article, Trains 1830 to 1890, it states, “It was also a lot quicker and opened everything in a way that coach travel could not do. Seaside fishing villages suddenly became fashionable and popular as day trips to the coast became common. Even the poor could afford rail travel as three different classes of travel existed – third class meant travelling in open topped carriages, but the price was such that the less well off in society could use trains. Towns and cities had cheaper

The first practical train was the horse car. It like car in back with a horse pulling it. When horse car was unable the growing traffic, tom thumb was built. The tom thumb was the first american locomotive. The mennon was a faster engine and use passenger service. By April, his command was running short on rations.

Once the miners used the idea of wagonways, the horses were able to pull at most two tons of coal, and travel twenty miles a day. Around 1603, an entrepreneur in coal mining was credited as having built the world’s first wagonway specifically for transporting coal through several mine sites in England. This first major railway made transportation for the coal miners significantly easier, but not yet as efficient. So, in 1758 the Middleton Railway became a cheaper wagon transportation and had wooden tracks that they used as a railway, until 1799 when they replaced them with iron edged rails. This led the miners to be able to fill up forty tons of coal in wagons, and the railway (which ran on a machine) would be able to travel two hundred miles a day, which led innovators to begin a new way of thinking and the formation of new ideas. In 1781 James Watt made an improvement on the Newcomen steam engine (an atmospheric engine invented in 1712 that was used to pump water out of mines) and turned that power to harness steam and turned it into a steam engine train. This led the Middleton Railway to become the first railway to use steam locomotives successfully. This particular railway changed the way people would mine

In 1758, the first railway sparked many inventions and inspired people like Marc Brunel and Thomas Cochrane to invent a way to create tunnels in unstable ground. This led to the creation of the London Underground, 250 miles of track, that helps people go about their daily lives in and around London.

Manmade canals had many problems even with the invention of the steam ship. Better locomotives were built leading to an investment in the infrastructure of modern rail ways. In 1830 the first public railway line was opened in England using the Rocket with steam engines built by George Stephenson. At the opening of this railway a regiment of troops was carried 34 miles in two hours. Before the introduction of the steam engine this would have been a journey of two days on foot. This event prompted a well-known French General to later prophesize that the strategical use of railways would create “a revolution in military science as great as that which had been brought about by the use of gunpowder.” By 1850 trains had reached a speed of 50 miles an hour and there were over 6,000 miles of railroad track in England

The first railway opened was the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad. was opened in 1836 outside of Montreal. Champlain and St. Lawrence was financed by Montreal brewery owner John Molson. It was made as a portage road to connect the St. Lawrence River with Lake Champlain. cutting time from the trip between Montreal and New York. Construction began in January 1835. Rail ways where still new. The world’s first way had opened just six years before in England, connecting Liverpool and Manchester. The early rails were made of wood with thin strips of iron. The locomotive for Canada’s first train was a Dorchester, built in Newcastle, England. Nicknamed “Iron Kitten” for its behavior, the Dorchester’s first test runs were held at night to avoid frightening