Railroad History, An Overview Of The Past
Railroad history in the United States is nearly as old as the country itself, dating back to the mid-1820s. As we know this great nation of ours would not have grown and prospered as it did without the railroads, which brought together the young United States and allowed for unprecedented growth and prosperity. The "Golden Age" of railroading lasted from roughly the 1880s to the 1920s before other modes of transportation (such as automobiles and airplanes) began to displace the industry as the leading means of moving people and goods. Railroads faced their toughest adversity during the 1960s and 1970s when it lost so much market share that many companies were either purchased by stronger ones or simply went bankrupt. After the industry was deregulated in 1980 it began to make a comeback and today is seeing a renaissance. In this section we will look at the history of our country's involvement with trains from its earliest beginnings in the 1820s; a timeline so to speak as to how the industry has arrived to where it is today.
Railroad history in America has its earliest beginnings dating back to 1815 when Colonel John Stevens gained the first railroad charter in North America to build the New Jersey Railroad Company, although it was never actually constructed until 1832, and would eventually become part of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Colonel Stevens also tested the first steam locomotive in the country in 1826, when he showcased his "Steam Waggon" design (basically a steam-powered horse carriage) on a small circular track he had built on his estate in Hoboken, New Jersey. Later, in August of 1829 Horatio Allen, a chief engineer for the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company (later the Delaware & Hudson Railway) tested an early English steam locomotive design on a 16-mile stretch of track the company owned between Honesdale and Carbondale, Pennsylvania.