railroad: An Era of Rapid Expansion

The Atlantic Coast was connected with the Great Lakes in 1850, with Chicago in 1853, and with the western side of the Mississippi in 1856. Cast iron proved too brittle in railway construction and was gradually replaced by wrought iron, which in turn, by 1863, was generally replaced by steel. At the same time, two acts of Congress (1862 and 1864) initiated the building of the first transcontinental railroad: the Union Pacific RR built westward from Nebraska and the Central Pacific RR built eastward from California; the two met at Promontory Summit, Utah, and were joined with a golden spike on May 10, 1869. For many years railroad tracks had varied in width, so that cars could not pass from one line to another. However, in the mid-1880s a standard gauge of 4 ft 8 1/2 in. (1.44 m) was adopted, mainly because the transcontinental railroad had, on federal orders, used such a width for its tracks.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• High-Speed Passenger Service
• Railroads in Other Countries
• Amtrak
• Decline and Revival
• Abuses and Regulation
• Technological Innovations
• An Era of Rapid Expansion
• The Early Nineteenth Century
• Early Railroads
• Bibliography

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