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America’s railroading story: A primer [1]
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Date: 2025-06-17
In a world that has grown increasingly more complex, why on earth would a country as technologically advanced as the U.S. desire to hold onto an anachronistic technology that has remained essentially unchanged for the past 200 years? Hey, it’s a legitimate question. (I mean look at the worlds of autonomobility and space flight as cases in point: They’re constantly evolving).
Consider this.
In defining our world as we know it, it is essential to chart U.S. railroading’s evolution. The study of history, therefore: 1) helps create a foundation and provide a starting point with which to measure our existence; 2) serves to rationalize our existence in this present day and age; and 3) helps pave the way in charting a course for our future as well. What better way is there to do this than through trains?
In fact, trains were created during a time when many of America’s early pioneers were seeking new opportunities and searching for ways to improve their quality of life. The primary mode of travel up to that time was by foot, horseback and Conestoga Wagon. While the canal builders themselves were busy establishing routes that would advance commerce and trade from towns along the mid-Atlantic region to the Ohio River, engineers were hard at work surveying a viable route for the building of the nation’s first great railroad project. Meanwhile, in England, tests were being conducted on the use of steam locomotion as a viable means of propulsion to pull conveyances along a fixed guideway known as a “rail-road,” that up to that time, had been performed by a lone equine or a team of horses. This was all going on at the turn of the 18th into the 19th centuries.
Fierce competition over which entity would be the first to reach the banks of the Ohio, the railroad and canal builders were often at odds many times getting in each other’s way and impeding progress. Eventually, the two agreed to help each other, further facilitating westward expansion of both canal and railroad. In fact, it was at Point of Rocks, Maryland where the two met. When the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad reached the Potomac River, the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal builders were already at it dredging a trench in advancing their own efforts west. Canal and railroad literally came together, both seeking rights to land that would gain each access to the Ohio River. It took an act of Congress to settle the dispute which stipulated that railroad and canal builders work together to advance both the canal and railroad from that point west. As a result, railroad and canal were constructed side by side until they reached the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers at the town of Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. The year was 1831. From there, the railroad succeeded in reaching the Ohio River and provided travelers with an efficient and dependable means of transportation between the port city of Baltimore and the Ohio River Valley, hence the name the B&O.
It was at this juncture that the railroad and passenger train proliferated to the point that passenger rail offered the traveler amenities that just weren’t possible with other forms of transportation. The railroads enjoyed their foothold in the passenger transportation marketplace up to the late 1800s and early 1900s when this dominance began to reverse itself.
Traditionally, during past wars there was always the threat of foreign invasion. Since the turn of the century, there hasn’t been a war fought on U.S. domestic land. Yet, this possibility does exist and preserving our vital national assets is of utmost importance. This is why the U.S. Government assumed control of the railroads during World War I. The railroads were placed under the authority of the United States Railroad Administration (U.S.R.A.). Throughout the war the railroads served as a “life-line” in transporting troops and equipment needed overseas. Railroads experienced tremendous growth during these times; in fact, had it not been for the railroads, the U.S. might have lost the war in the European Theater. The importance of trains (both passenger as well as freight) to our nation’s security, can’t be emphasized enough. However, after the Second World War, the inevitable decline in passenger service resumed.
At World War II’s conclusion, automobile production domestically began to skyrocket, spelling disaster for the passenger train industry. Government dollars were pouring into the nation’s highway infrastructure, making car travel quite accessible and highly desirable over that of train travel. Suddenly the railroads which long maintained the upper hand in the transportation industry, were beginning to feel the pinch of a nation in love with its automobiles. Questioning their roles as passenger train service providers, freight railroads began to relinquish their responsibility for running passenger trains. The romantic mystique that surrounded trains of a bygone era was all but forgotten by the late 1960s and early ’70s. And by May 1, 1971 (the day Amtrak officially came into existence), crack passenger trains such as Delaware and Hudson Railway’s “Laurentian,” made their final runs, thus ending a glorious era in passenger rail travel.
Notes
In an earlier version it was written that “Meanwhile, in England, tests were being conducted on the use of steam locomotion as a viable means of propulsion to pull conveyances along a fixed guideway known as a rail-road,’ that up to that time, had been performed by a lone equine or a team of horses. This was all going on at the turn of the 19th into the 20th centuries.” The information in that last statement was incorrect. Text has since been revised and the information in question is now correct.
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