The Great Railroad Revolution (3 page)

Like much of the story of the US railroads, the building of the transcontinental encompassed both the best and the worst aspects of pioneering American culture. On the one hand, there was the extraordinary achievement of building nearly two thousand miles of line through two mountain ranges and a long stretch of desert, making it by far the longest railroad in the world up to that point; on the other, there was the shameless corruption that allowed the directors of both companies to make extraordinary riches through the simple expedient of contracting the work through dummy construction companies. Crédit Mobilier of America, established in 1864 by Dr. Thomas Durant, was at the center of the scandal that broke in 1872, when it was revealed that a number of congressmen had received cash bribes or shares in the company. There was, too, the excess of competitive zeal that saw, at one point, the ridiculous phenomenon of the two railroad companies grading parallel lines in order to maximize the land grants paid by the government. Nevertheless, the celebration to mark the completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory Point, Utah Territory, in 1869 must be seen as one of the turning points of US history.

In Chapters 6 and 7, the amazing exponential growth of the railroads during the rest of the nineteenth century is explored against the backdrop
of their growing unpopularity. No community of any size in the United States could afford to be out of range of a locomotive's whistle, and, by the end of the century, with a network encompassing more than two hundred thousand miles, very few were. The transcontinental had prompted growth in the West, and the railroad was beginning to knit the nation together. The 1880s saw the biggest increase in rail mileage of any period of US history: seventy-one thousand miles of track were built during this decade, most of it in the states west of the Mississippi. The construction boom was greatly stimulated by the federal government's continuing program of offering land grants to the railroad companies constructing these lines. The grants were controversial, as they benefited a relatively small number of companies, but they undoubtedly played a critical role in bringing the eastern and western parts of the United States together. Without them, the widespread settlement of the West by newly arrived immigrants might not have been possible.

For passengers, technical improvements were making their journeys better. Significant improvements to the quality of the tracks allowed faster speeds, while better locomotive technology enabled the railroads to carry heavier loads at a cheaper rate. Introduction of better brakes, steel rails, and improved couplers enhanced the performance of an industry that had been widely criticized for delays and accidents. The needs of passengers were catered to by such innovations as dining and sleeping cars promoted by inventor and industrialist George Pullman. In addition, the railroads began to standardize equipment and operating procedures, further reducing costs and making it easier for trains to run on the lines of other companies.

During this period of rapid growth, the very nature of the rail system changed in fundamental and highly visible ways: for instance, towns with two or more stations often built one consolidated “union” station, and lines that had hitherto been separate were linked for the first time. In November 1883, time was standardized into four zones to help the railroads keep a schedule. A truly national rail network was taking shape.

Despite these many positive developments for the railroads, services remained basic on many lines, adding to the unpopularity of the railroads with some members of the public. The postbellum period was also the age of “bare knuckles,” as the major companies began to slug it out for increased market share. Powerful and unscrupulous railroad magnates—
men like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Daniel Drew, and banker Jay Gould— became a feature of the industrial landscape of America's “Gilded Age,” and they exacerbated the railroads' unpopularity, as did their response to the increasing labor unrest. The resentment engendered by several railroad strikes would be a significant factor in the birth of labor unions in the United States. The farmers became an especially strong force opposed to the monopoly of the railroads, and even though many of their accusations were unfair, they were a potent and influential opposition. Over the course of barely a generation, the railroads became, first, disliked, and then widely resented. It was partly a natural cycle. At first the railroads had been the plucky innovator, the new kid on the block bringing prosperity and opening new horizons, then they became the established but respected business, and eventually they turned into the rapacious monopolist, reviled by almost everyone.

Chapter 8, taking a breather from the chronological narrative, looks at how, despite the increasing hostility toward them, the railroads had changed America. Few aspects of American life remained unaffected. Most of the changes brought about by the railroad were beneficial: economic growth, creation of jobs, more efficient markets, opportunities to travel, easier distribution of goods, and so on. There were numerous others ways in which trains and stations stimulated local economic activity. The trains brought in mail-order goods from department stores in the city, fresh produce for the local shops, mail, packages, and newspapers. Even the station clock was a useful public amenity, providing what was probably the best local estimate of the time. The station, or depot, however modest, would become a key part of the town's amenities, the start or end of most people's visits or of journeys by local inhabitants to far- distant lands. The relationship between the town and the station would be symbiotic, and as with much of this story, it is difficult to disentangle the causation.

There were, though, negatives too. Because the poor could not afford to travel, it could be argued that the railroads exacerbated the differences between the haves and the have-nots. The big towns prospered thanks to these crowds who boosted their economies as they shopped, ate in restaurants, and stayed in hotels. The consequent rapid and unplanned growth of the cities, stimulated by the railroads, was not necessarily a welcome change. Railroads, as with all transportation improvements, benefit the
areas where people want to go, and although there may have been the occasional rural excursion, for the most part it was the cities that profited from the ability of people to travel more easily. Central business districts sprang up near railroad stations, and, in order to maintain as much density as possible, the notion of the office block, and later the skyscraper, was born. These buildings full of white-collar staff were the new factories of the age, housing hundreds, if not thousands, of office workers in the way that the manufacturing industry had done earlier.

The ninth chapter looks at the effect of the restrictive legislation, born of the increasing mistrust of the railroads, which was to do them great harm in the twentieth century when their stranglehold over the transportation industry was lost. By the early years of the new century, the railroads had consolidated into seven major groupings (although many other smaller companies remained independent), a process that both increased their efficiency and allowed them to invest more in improvements. New lines were no longer the priority, since virtually every community was now connected to the network, but there was a need for massive investment in the system. Whereas many improvements were made in the pre–First World War period, the strictness of the control by the new regulator, the Interstate Commerce Commission, reduced the railroads' profits and therefore their ability to invest. The key question was whether the railroads would actually have used any extra profits to good effect, or would they have simply paid out more money to their shareholders?

Consequently, the railroads entered the First World War in a relatively poor state. The neglected railroads were now called upon to provide for unprecedented levels of demand and were found wanting. They were short of every type of capital asset, from new rails to functioning locomotives, and the lack of coordination between them meant services were inefficient and slow. As a result, the government was forced to take over control of the railroads during the war, an unprecedented and largely unwelcome situation, which also posed the dilemma of what to do with them when the fighting ceased.

Chapter 10 covers the interwar years when, to arrest the decline in passenger numbers, the railroads invested heavily in new equipment and, after prevaricating, began to move over to the new technology of diesel that offered cheaper and faster services. This was the period when the rail
companies provided the most exciting trains that ever ran on the American rail network, although sadly only for a relatively brief period, as competition from roads and later aviation killed off these services. This time, in 1941, the railroads entered the war better equipped and ready to cooperate with each other in order to ensure there was no repeat of government takeover.

And, finally, the last two chapters show how the performance of the railroads in the Second World War was their last heyday, preceding a remarkably rapid decline, first in passengers, and then in freight, which actually could have resulted in the closure of much of the network. In the event, the railroads were rescued by the government and by changes in legislation. The freight railroads are now flourishing and passenger rail growing, amid much discussion about increased investment and, in particular, high-speed rail. Towns and cities across the country see rail as a way of reducing the burden on the roads, and, despite opposition, many new schemes are being put forward. The railroad, a nineteenth-century invention that struggled in the latter part of the twentieth, undoubtedly has a great future in the twenty-first.

I dislike the expression
road
, shortened from
railroad
and used very widely in America, because of the confusion it might have caused among readers little versed in railroad history, and therefore have rarely used it. I have, too, eschewed initials. The Baltimore & Ohio remains just that, rather than the B&O, because the proliferation of initials makes for difficult reading. This style, too, imposed on me a discipline not to use the names too often.

There are a few passages that are based on my earlier book
Blood, Iron, and Gold
, which, although covering the world's railroads, detailed the US story, and therefore inevitably I have drawn upon some parts of the narrative but expanded them. Similarly, a few events described in
Fire and Steam
, my book on the history of Britain's railroads, have inevitably been repeated in the first chapter, which recounts the prehistory of the railroads, and the chapter on the Civil War relies in part from the equivalent chapter in
Engines of War.

I have ignored the Canadian and Mexican railroads, although they are in many ways part of the same interconnected system, not least through
shared ownership. That is particularly true of the transcontinentals—like the United States, Canada built far too many too quickly, ending up with three to serve a tiny population—but I have left them out for reasons of simplicity and brevity. Recounting those stories is for another book.

I realize that it is somewhat cheeky of me, a Brit, to try to write a concise history of American railroads. My justification is that it sometimes takes an outsider to understand the importance of what local people take for granted or simply ignore out of familiarity. It has been a fantastic and hugely enjoyable task. I traveled twice extensively on the US rail network and met numerous people with an interest in rail who helped formulate my ideas. Nevertheless, I am sure there are mistakes, and errors in interpretation. They are, of course, all my own. I hope, though, that they do not detract from the thrust of the book, which is to show the railroads in context and to explain how they helped to create the America of today, even though that has been largely forgotten. Please do point out any mistakes by e-mailing me via my website,
www.christianwolmar.co.uk
. This has proved very useful in the past, and any corrections will find their way into future editions.

Special thanks are due to the hardy individuals who read the full draft and provided detailed corrections and suggestions: Clyde Williams, Gerald Rawling, John Fowler, Andrew Dow, and John Sears. I cannot thank them enough. Some of the mistakes they uncovered required a level of attention to detail and knowledge that astonishes me. Many other people provided support, advice, corrections, or information. In no particular order: Robert Lester Porter, Fritz Plous and the people on his e-mail list, Diana Bailey Harris, Teresa Glynn (for office support), Xavier Bryce, Rupert Brennan Brown, Andrew Adonis, Deborah Reddig, Craig Haberle and all at the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum, Kelly Ohler, Mike Forter, Ed Burkhardt, Nigel Harris, Mark Sullivan, Pip Dunn, and Tony Streeter.

Because of a hard-drive failure at just the wrong time, I may have omitted several people, to whom I am deeply apologetic. I would, too, like to thank Amtrak, which did provide me with free travel—though not sleeper accommodation—for my tour around the country in the autumn of 2010. I may be a bit hard on the company, but at least it is still there celebrating its fortieth anniversary, which many thought it would never reach.

My agent, Andrew Lownie, steers me through the confusing world of publishing, and the team at PublicAffairs is ever supportive. Special thanks are due to my editor, Richard Milbank, at my British publisher, Atlantic Books, who did so much to improve the book with amazingly detailed and thorough work, and to Toby Mundy, Atlantic's chief executive, who always believes in my ability to pull off these projects. Thank you also to Annette Wenda, copy editor of the American edition, for her excellent work. And special thanks to my partner, Deborah Maby, who is always there for me.