First_railroad_in_the_United_States

Oldest railroads in North America

Oldest railroads in North America

List of earliest railroads in North America

This is a list of the earliest railroads in North America, including various railroad-like precursors to the general modern form of a company or government agency operating locomotive-drawn trains on metal tracks.

A Gilded Age train station sits at the summit terminus of what was one of the most important nine miles of railroad in the United States in the 1830s: the Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill Railroad, which later became the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway. The Victorian building replaced the original offices, becoming one of the first train stations to host travelers. The first documented passenger traffic arrived in the later half of 1827 when the area down to Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania was known as "the Switzerland of America"; regular passenger trains transported urban tourists from 1829 until early 1932.

Railroad-like entities (1700s–1810s)

  • 1720: A railroad was reportedly used in the construction of the French fortress in Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, Canada.[1]
  • 1764: Between 1762 and 1764, at the close of the French and Indian War, a gravity railroad (mechanized tramway) (Montresor's Tramway) was built by British military engineers up the steep riverside terrain near the Niagara River waterfall's escarpment at the Niagara Portage, which the local Senecas called Crawl on All Fours, in Lewiston, New York.[2] Before the British conquest, under French control the portage had employed nearly 200 Seneca porters. However, once the British took control of the area, they installed a cable railway using sledges (heavy sleds without wheels) to hold the track between the rails. The sleds were capable of carrying 12 to 14 barrels at a time (a serious weight capacity even if only small shoulder-hoistable/mule-compatible keg-sized barrels, taken along with its longevity) indicating that it was a funicular design with two tracks. With barrels as the primary Up load's configuration and they also provided a ready-made counterweight with addition of sufficient Niagara River water as the likely mass used to adjust the lifting force. Designed by Captain John Montresor, the new railway replaced manual labor performed by the Seneca and touched off what might be the first labor rebellion in North America when the Seneca became unemployed; in September 1763, the Senecas revolted and killed many British soldiers and workers in what is called the Devil's Hole Massacre. The tramway was in use until the early 1800s[3]
  • 1799–1805: Boston developers began to reduce the height of Mount Vernon before building streets and homes. Silas Whitney constructed a gravity railroad to move excavated material down the hill to fill marshy areas to create new land from the Back Bay.[4] Frederick C. Gamst, a professor of anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, believed this to be the same railroad equipment as used by Bulfinch on his Beacon Hill railway, given the relations of both men to the land speculation syndicate.[5]
  • 1809:[lower-alpha 1] A three-quarter-mile wooden tracked railway is built in Nether Providence Township, Pennsylvania by Thomas Leiper to deliver stone from his quarries to market.[6] The track, with a 4-foot (1.2 m) gauge,[5] had a grade of 1½ inches to the yard (1:24 or about 4%) over its total length of 60 yards (54.9 m) and proves satisfactory when tested with a loaded car.[7][8]
1934 photo of the incline section of the Granite Railway

Early railroad companies (1820s–1830s)

Granite, coal and cotton railroads
Historical Marker of the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, incorporated in 1826 and opened in 1831
U.S. railroads in 1835

Early common carriers (1820s–1830s)

While private railroads are legally free to choose their jobs and customers, common carriers must charge fair rates to all comers.

Any effort to arrange early common-carrier railroads in chronological order must choose among various possible criterion dates, including applying for a state charter, receiving a charter, forming a company to build a railroad, beginning construction, opening operations, and so forth.

More information Name, Chartered ...
The New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad in 1835

Selected railroads chartered since 1832:

Tunnels and bridges

The expanded Park Avenue Tunnel in 1941

West of the Mississippi River

Notes

  1. Ganst's: No.- 03
  2. Ganst's: No.- 04

See also

References

  1. [1]
    Brown, Robert R. (October 1949). Canada's Earliest Railway Lines. Railway & Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin #78.
  2. [2]
    Text online of placement commemorating historic railroad., access-date=2017-03-01
  3. [3]
    "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-26. Retrieved 2010-03-11.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. [4]
    Whitehill, Walter Muir (1959). Boston - A Topographical History. Harvard University Press. p. 62.
  5. [5]
    Gamst, Frederick C.; The Transfer of Pioneering British Railroad Technology to North America, Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum; "First, in 1795 on Boston's Beacon Hill, a wooden railway of about a two-foot gauge in the form of a double-track inclined plane took earth removed from the top of the hill to its base. This excavation prepared a level area for the new State House of 1798, designed by the architect and construction engineer Charles Bulfinch."
  6. [6]
    "Leiper Railway Historical Marker". www.explorepahistory.com. WITF, Inc. Retrieved 3 November 2022.
  7. [7]
    Gamst observes Bullfinch probably employed a similar technically-savvy individual familiar with British technologies to oversee construction and the relatively frenetic funicular operations of the Boston Back Bay railroads.
  8. [8]
    Dunbar, Seymour. A History of Travel in America. pp. 876–7.
  9. [9]
    Dunbar. quoting Thomas McKibben of Baltimore in the American Engineer, 1886. pp. 878–9.
  10. [10]
    Dunbar. p. 880. {{cite book}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  11. [11]
    Railroads and Canals of the United States of America by Henry V. Poor (New York: John H. Schultz & Co, 1860), page 85
  12. [12]
    American Railroading Began Here cited 15 October 2009.
  13. [13]
    Heydinger, Earl J. (1964). "Railroads of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company: GROUP IX". Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin. 110 (110). Railway and Locomotive Historical Society: 59–62. JSTOR 43518101. THE MAUCH CHUNK RAILROAD: Pennsylvania's first railroad and first anthracite carrier opened on Saturday, May 5th, 1827, when seven cars of coal passed from the Summit Hill mines of the L. C. & N. Company to their canal at Mauch Chunk, descending 936 feet in the nine-mile trip. Sixteen-year-old Solomon White Roberts, later a noted railroad engineer, who had helped his uncle, Josiah White, build the railroad, rode the first delivery of coal by rail. Loaded cars made the trip in a half-hour; mules returned three or four empties over the same route in three to four hours. Evidently the line had only seven (or twenty-one) coal cars at the opening, as that number brought coal to the canal on the following Monday and Tuesday also. These three days' deliveries, twenty-one cars, deposited nearly a thousand tons of anthracite into a chute over the canal boat landing. Loaded cars descending drew empties from the bottom of this chute on a self-acting plane. Built in a period of four months, on a turnpike previously used for coal wagons, the line, 12-1/2, miles with sidings, cost $38,726. Ties were on four-foot centers; strap rail was ⅜" x 1½".
  14. [14]
    Railroads and Canals of the United States of America by Henry V. Poor (New York: John H. Schultz & Co, 1860), pages 415,537
  15. [15]
    Heydinger 1964, pp. 59–62.
  16. [16]
    Fred Brenckman, Official Commonwealth Historian (1884). History of Carbon County Pennsylvania (2nd ed.). Harrisburg, Pa., J.J. Nungesser.
  17. [17]
    Brenckman.
  18. [18]
    Bartholomew, Ann M.; Metz, Lance E.; Kneis, Michael (1989). DELAWARE and LEHIGH CANALS, 158 pages (First ed.). Oak Printing Company, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: Center for Canal History and Technology, Hugh Moore Historical Park and Museum, Inc., Easton, Pennsylvania. pp. 4–5. ISBN 0930973097. LCCN 89-25150.
  19. [19]
    Bartholomew makes the point this "monotonically even descent grade" over such a length was an engineering first, not only in North America, but also in European road construction of any kind.
  20. [20]
    Railroads and Canals of the United States of America by Henry V. Poor (New York: John H. Schultz & Co, 1860), page 415
  21. [21]
    in The Transfer of Pioneering British Railroad Technology to North America by Frederick C. Gamst, University of Massachusetts, Boston
  22. [22]
    Railroads and Canals of the United States of America by Henry V. Poor (New York: John H. Schultz & Co, 1860), page 459
  23. [23]
    Railroads and Canals of the United States of America by Henry V. Poor (New York: John H. Schultz & Co, 1860), page 501
  24. [24]
    Welcome to Tuscumbia, Alabama - You Should See Us Now!! Archived 2009-12-23 at the Wayback Machine
  25. [25]
    Railroads and Canals of the United States of America by Henry V. Poor (New York: John H. Schultz & Co, 1860), page 462
  26. [26]
    Railroads and Canals of the United States of America by Henry V. Poor (New York: John H. Schultz & Co, 1860), page 460
  27. [27]
    Development of Early Transportation Systems in the United States by J.L. Ringwalt (Philadelphia: Railway World Office, 1888), (RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION FROM 1830 TO 1840)
  28. [28]
    Meridian Speedway History, accessed July 2021.
  29. [29]
    ExplorePAHistory.com Historical Marker Allegheny Portage Railroad
  30. [30]
    ExplorePAHistory.com Historical Marker Service began on wooden rails.
  31. [31]
    Lansford-Hauto tunnel called an engineering marvel, access-date=2017-0301
  32. [32]
    Facebook image of legal notice of sale
  33. [33]
    Red River Railroad

Specific railroads
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