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“The history of railroading through 1915, including film of the DeWitt Clinton replica in operation, horse-drawn streetcars and elevated rail in New York City, and the electrification of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific rail line.” Silent.
Public domain film slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
Including systems with man or horse power, and tracks or guides made of stone or wood, the history of rail transport dates to as early as Greek times.
Wagonways were relatively common in Europe (typically in mining) from about 1500 through 1800. Mechanised rail transport systems first appeared in England in the 1820s. These systems, which made use of the steam locomotive, were critical to the Industrial revolution and to the development of export economies across the world. They remained the primary form of land transport ever since for most of the world…
…Wagonways (or ‘tramways’) are thought to have developed in Germany in the 1550s to facilitate the transport of ore tubs to and from mines, utilising primitive wooden rails. Such an operation was illustrated in 1556 by Georgius Agricola…
In the late 1760s, the Coalbrookdale Company began to fix plates of cast iron to the upper surface of the wooden rails. These (and earlier railways) had flanged wheels as on modern railways, but another system was introduced, in which unflanged wheels ran on L-shaped metal plates — these became known as plateways. John Curr, a Sheffield colliery manager, invented this flanged rail, though the exact date of this is disputed. The plate rail was taken up by Benjamin Outram for wagonways serving his canals, manufacturing them at his Butterley ironworks. Meanwhile William Jessop, a civil engineer, had used a form of edge rail successfully for an extension to the Charnwood Forest Canal at Nanpantan, Loughborough, Leicestershire in 1789. Jessop became a partner in the Butterley Company in 1790. The flanged wheel eventually proved its superiority due to its performance on curves, and the composite iron/wood rail was replaced by all metal rail, with its vastly superior stiffness, durability, and safety.
The introduction of the Bessemer process for making cheap steel led to the era of great expansion of railways that began in the late 1860s. Steel rails lasted several times longer than iron…
The first working model of a steam rail locomotive was designed and constructed by John Fitch in the United States in 1794. The first full scale working railway steam locomotive was built in the United Kingdom in 1804 by Richard Trevithick, an English engineer born in Cornwall… On 21 February 1804 the world’s first railway journey took place as Trevithick’s unnamed steam locomotive hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales…
The first commercially successful steam locomotive was Matthew Murray’s rack locomotive Salamanca built for the narrow gauge Middleton Railway in 1812…
Railroads played a large role in the development of the United States from the industrial revolution in the North-east 1810-50 to the colonization of the West 1850-1890. The American railroad mania began with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1828 and flourished until the Panic of 1873 bankrupted many companies and temporarily ended growth.
Although the 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. The North and Midwest constructed networks that linked every city by 1860. In the heavily settled the Midwestern Corn Belt, over 80 percent of farms were within 5 miles of a railway…
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. The use of diesel electric locomotives (after 1940) made for much more efficient operations that needed fewer workers on the road and in repair shops.
Mileage
Route mileage peaked at 254,000 in 1916 and fell to 140,000 in 2009.
In 1830, there were about 75 miles (121 km) of railroad track, in short lines linked to coal and granite mines.). After this, railroad lines grew rapidly… By 1890 the national system was virtually complete with 164,000 miles (264,000 km)…
…in January 1888, Richmond, Virginia served as American proving grounds for electric railways as Frank Sprague built an electric streetcar system there. By the 1890s, electric power became practical and more widespread, allowing extensive underground railways. Large cities such as London, New York, and Paris built subway systems.
