In 1880, with 30,000 employees and $400 million in capital, it was the nation's largest corporation. Founded in 1846 as purely an in-state line, the Philadelphia-based Pennsylvania Railroad became the nation's single most important railroad, carrying 10 percent of all freight in America and 20 percent of all passengers. The mileage of American railroads more than quintupled from 1860 to 1890, growing from 30,000 miles to almost 160,000.ĭozens of men atop a locomotive In this sprawling national network, Pennsylvania became a crossroads, with four major trunk lines linking the East Coast to western states (Pennsylvania Railroad, Baltimore and Ohio, New York Central, and Erie), and others linking Canada and northern states through Pittsburgh and Philadelphia to the states to the south. With these steps, railroads grew from regional feeder lines into a national network, an achievement that was capped by the driving of the Golden Spike on the first transcontinental railroad in 1869. After the war, the industry began to agree on standards, which included a uniform track gauge of 4 feet 8-1/2 inches between the rails, and couplers and other fittings needed to freely exchange cars among railroads. And travelers began to use trains to travel for shopping, business, vacations, and, around cities, to commute to and from work.ĭuring the Civil War, railroads moved troops and materiel to the front, and evacuated wounded soldiers to hospitals. Passenger trains carried people and mail rapidly. The invention of refrigerator cars brought Iowa beef, California lettuce, and Florida oranges to the East Coast. Pennsylvania agriculture expanded as once-isolated regions populated by farmers now reached out via the rails to new markets. Phila, GTown, and Norristown RR Schedule, 1832 Trains also raised the standard of living by cheaply transporting consumer goods and foodstuffs over long distances. They hauled minerals to iron foundries and steel mills, then turned around and moved the finished metal to market. Trains carried coal and lumber to consumers quickly and cheaply. In Pennsylvania and the rest of the nation, the industrial revolution rode on American rails. In 1844, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad became the first line in America to carry a million tons of freight in a year. Railroads soon unlocked the raw materials with which Pennsylvania was blessed, allowing manufacturing to flourish.

Though canals continued to move substantial material within the state, faster, more versatile railroads soon took over the job of meeting most transportation needs. But it was soon doomed by the coming of the cheaper, all-purpose, all-weather Pennsylvania Railroad.

This patchwork of canals, railroads, and inclined planes offered a 3-1/2-day journey from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. Started in 1834, the state-owned Main Line of Public Works was an ingenious solution that used canal boats where possible on relatively level ground and a combination of gravity and stationary steam engines where necessary in the mountains. But this and other early locomotives were too small and unreliable to move significant amounts of freight over the Allegheny Mountains. It first arrived in the United States in 1829 when the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company imported the Stourbridge Lion, the first steam locomotive to operate in America, from England. Harnessing the power of steam to create a movable form of propulsion first took place in Great Britain. Map of Trunk Lines Suddenly Pennsylvanians had to find a way to compete with New York and link their state to Midwestern markets. Or by the sight of Amtrak's high-speed Acela train, capable of sprinting 150 miles an hour before gliding to a smooth stop at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. By the sight of intermodal trains, loaded with double-stacked cargo containers from the North Pacific and now slicing through Erie or Johnstown en route to the East Coast. The symbols of the industry's rich past - the mournful sound of a steam-locomotive whistle, or banjo-plunking ballads about the lonely life of a brakeman - have been replaced by the daily marvel of fleets moving 10,000-ton coal trains out of the bituminous coalfields of Greene County to electric-generating stations across the Northeast. In Pennsylvania, railroading is not only alive but also thriving. And today, when a train rumbles by -whether it's a two-car freight on a rural line or the silvery, standing-room-only Paoli Local at rush hour - the state's railroading history is still being written. Trains made Pennsylvania an industrial giant. Baldwin’s construction of “Old Ironsides.

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