(Subbing for JaxDem--who decided to rest for a few days---good for her; well deserved!)
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Doing one of these diaries is a good way to get your feet wet if you have been hesitant about writing a diary. You can write as much or as little as you want. The audience here is always supportive.
JaxDem last Friday wrote a great diary on the beginnings of Floridas Rail system
I read it; and got interested enough to want to add some more general info about our now, virtually non-existent, Railroad system....an unfortunate happenstance for America.
(This will not come up to Jax' level, but will give a few bits of info for you.....)
First, some pictures...of those early trains...
From some Stamp designs...
This is the stamp depicting the 75th Anniversary of of the Intercontinental Railway
This tells of the fascination of young boys with the electric toy trains....(what young boy growing in the '40's & '50's didn't want a train set???)
(Stamp collecting is a little past hobby of mine---lots of history in those little buggers)
And, a couple more standard photos..
The wonderful early pioneer: the Steam locomotive!
Note the length of this freight train---they went on & on & on........
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Onto a chronology of where & when Railroads got started....
1797 The steam locomotive is invented in England.
1823 The first public railway in the world opens in England.
1827 The first railroad in North America — the Baltimore & Ohio — is chartered by
Baltimore merchants.
1830 The first regularly-scheduled steam-powered rail passenger service in the U.S.
begins operation in South Carolina, utilizing the U.S.-built locomotive The Best
Friend of Charleston.
1833 Andrew Jackson travels from Baltimore to Ellicott's Mills, becoming the first sitting
U.S. president to ride the rails.
1833 A total of 380 miles of rail track are in operation in the United States.
1838 Five of the six New England states have rail service, as do such frontier states as
Kentucky and Indiana.
1840 More than 2,800 miles of track are in operation in the United States.
1842 Charles Dickens rides the rails while visiting the United States to lecture in favor
of an international copyright agreement and in opposition to slavery. Comparing
U.S. and English railroads, he wrote, “There are no first and second class
carriages as with us; but there is a gentleman's car and a ladies' car: the main
distinction between which is that in the first, everybody smokes; and in the
second, nobody does.”
1850 More than 9,000 miles of track are in operation in the United States, as much as
in the rest of the world combined.
1854 Attorney Abraham Lincoln represents the Illinois Central Railroad.
1860 More than 30,000 miles of track are in operation in the United States.
1862 President Abraham Lincoln formally inaugurates construction of the
transcontinental railroad that will ultimately link California with the rest of the
nation.
So, from 1833 to 1860 we jump 100 fold....an incredible increase in that time of hard labor, and no special technology. Much of New England was well covered with tracks.
Getting to Boston from the other states was not such a big deal anymore....
The most important step took place when Lincoln signed the paper for the Transcontinental railroad....
1862
President Abraham Lincoln signs the Pacific Railroad Act, which names and directs two companies, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific, to construct a transcontinental railroad.
1869
The golden spike is driven at Promontory Summit, Utah by officials of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific, marking the inauguration of the transcontinental railroad
In those seven intervening years...
As it stood, only trails and wagon tracks crossed the wilderness in the mid-19th century. To bridge that wilderness with rails took six years and an army of 20,000 men, most of them immigrants from China and Europe. It took brute human effort, as the building was done entirely by hand. To this day, no one knows how many died in the effort, or what it really cost.
The big event for America was the final meeting of East & West--known as the Golden Spike Ceremony.
Here are some pictures....
Taken during the celebrations on May 10, 1869, this A.J. Russell photograph is arguably the most famous image of the events of the day. Similar views also were captured by Salt Lake City photographer Charles Savage.
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During the period after that ceremony, travel by train increased steadily, despite enormous corruption and competition among the many small lines; who often charged huge fares, and had inconsistent schedules.
From here, the big railways consolidated many of the smaller short lines; and grew accordingly. In 1887 the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commision) was formed to oversee the regulation, etc. of the RR's.
With the expansions & consolidations; came many bankruptcies---as happens with buying into debt---something that we have recently learned.
However, it was still a time of tremendous growth in passenger travel----going from a solid base of many thousands in every state, to a peak in the early 20th Century, known as The Golden Age of Railroads
This was also the time that the industry saw an all-time high of track mileage of 254,037 miles in 1916. Over all, it certainly was the period in our nation’s history that nearly everyone was exposed to railroads in one shape or form particularly because it was the fastest and preferred method of travel.
source
However, from that peak in 1916, passenger travel started it's decline...
The years between the wars were characterized chiefly by competition. With the advent of the Model T, the American public suddenly had the option of conveying themselves around the country. Travel by car, tour bus, and soon, by plane, heralded the decline of rail passenger travel, at least for the moment. The railroad industry was also threatened with the emerging economical trucking industry, which promised to take a bite out of the freight business.
These years of decline however, led to an all out push for increased efficiency. Locomotives and equipment were improved, the loading and unloading of freight cars became a science, and mileage was increased per freight car. This was also the age of luxury passenger travel.
The decline accelerated during the period after immediately following WWII...
However, following WWII passenger traffic began to drop significantly and would not recover, even while some railroads began to update their passenger fleets with new equipment through the 1950s. A decade later, in the 1960s, industry losing significantly with its passenger operations (while passenger trains are rarely profitable, before the 1950s railroads were earning enough that their freight revenues could easily offset the losses) and desperately wanted out.
With the Interstate Highway System put in place in the '50's; and America's love of the automobile, the decline was firmly in place:
• Between an 18-year span following the year after World War II, 1946, passenger traffic declined from 770 million to 298 million by 1964
• Commuter trains declined by 80% from over 2,500 in the mid-1950s to under 500 by the late 1960s.
This chart says it all:
(The huge drop from 1960 is somewhat misleading, as the peak was actually IN 1960--and the drop-off spiraled down immediately after)
The drop in passenger service country-wide, however, has been balanced by the increase in local commuter rail traffic in certain parts of the country---notably the Northeast---with Amtrak. Started in 1971, this government subsidized program has made our daily commute faster, safer, and is environmentally friendly.........
However, THAT story is one for another day.
Think of where we could be with a system that provided service into all large cities; or from one major city to another---on a simple, and perhaps slightly faster basis?
Perhaps with a "bullet train" like this from Japan, or something similar....
Offer your thoughts on all of this---or anything else that is on your mind today,.....
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Here is a terrific link from Union Pacific detailing their 150 years---starts with the first action. Touch the various lines (years) and see it unfold.
Other links:
Golden Age
Wiki --rail travel
Streamliners. The classics
Travel by Train
A fuller chronology