The Great Railroad Revolution

by Christian Wolmar

  After a year of this ridiculous situation, the owners of the Buffalo & State Line Railroad were able to acquire two-thirds of the Erie & Northeast’s stock and, in November 1853, made the decision to standardize the whole track across this narrow northern corner of Pennsylvania using the four-foot-ten gauge. However, the townsfolk of Erie were infuriated by the decision, fearing that their town’s very raison d’être would be threatened by the move.

  As preparations began for the gauge change, the mayor of Erie enlisted a force of 150 townsmen under the guise of a special police force to “restore order,” which in fact involved attacking and destroying railroad property. The legitimized mob tore down bridges and ripped up the tracks, earning them the nickname “the Rippers.” They managed to create an eight-mile gap in the Erie & Northeast Railroad’s rail line that was not restored until the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law authorizing the state to standardize all the railroad gauges and backed it by protecting the property of the rail companies.

  The Erie Gauge War was just one of a number of conflicts triggered by the vexed issue of gauge width. There were numerous others. When in the 1870s the evocatively named Androscoggin & Kennebec Railroad in Maine sought to change from broad gauge to standard to enable it to connect with Boston, local objectors managed to obtain an injunction to prevent the conversion, but before they could serve it, the railroad, rather shockingly, sent out teams of workers on the Sabbath to carry out the work.

  The reason the apparently arcane and technical matter of track gauge could arouse such passions was because it went right to the heart of a much deeper issue—that of the nature of the nation these early Americans were intent on creating. The move to standardize gauge was the globalization of its day, the natural province of the free traders and the settlers who wanted to create one big America best represented by the views of the Federalist founding father Alexander Hamilton. As Mark Reutter, in the introduction to a history of the midcentury American rail network, suggests, “A standardized gauge fits a business model that places a premium on high volume and low cost, the very principles that Hamilton had advocated for his factory system.”14

  Those who favored keeping their railroads local, limiting their scope through the need to change trains and transfer goods, were more in tune with the ideas of Thomas Jefferson, whose vision had been of a land of urban factories and self-sufficient rural farms. Indeed, until the arrival of the railroad, this was the natural way of life for most Americans, who created a world where clothing was sewn by mothers and daughters, shoes were made by the village cordwainer, food was grown locally, and tools, and even crude firearms, were forged by the local blacksmith. With few roads and little reason to use them, people rarely ventured more than a few miles from where they were born. Eager to improve their lot, many of these villagers and farmers had supported the idea of the railroads, and many had even invested in them. However, they had not understood the power of what they had unleashed. The very people who had invested in the local railroad company—the farmers and the merchants keen for easier access to markets—had most to lose from railroads that could travel long distances without stopping, as the people of Erie realized in 1853. Getting produce to the local market town might be of great benefit, but facing competition from far more distant places could put them out of business or reduce the value of their produce. Therefore, “while technical journals generally advocated a uniform gauge, local politicians were more comfortable with small, fragmented railroads.”15

  This was a painful awakening for many Americans. The wonderful invention that had elicited almost universal support and whose arrival had been cheered in so many places across the nation was suddenly turning out to be hydra-headed. Until now Americans—with the exception of the odd stagecoach driver and canal owner—had regarded the benefits of the railroad to be universal, but its impact was turning out to be more complex than first thought, and moreover could be detrimental to many local interests. It was at this point that the railroads began to elicit significant levels of opposition for the first time, germinating the wider antipathy that would later be felt toward them. For a while, though, the people were mostly protected from the worst depredations of the iron road. The Jeffersonian ideals triumphed, as they accorded with the strong contemporary ethos of states’ rights, but posed a barrier to the development of the railroads: “The success with which local interests managed to hobble this lusty steed [the iron horse] for over thirty years is a testament to the vigor of state and local rights in an age in which the powers of federalism were hardly realized.”16

  Ultimately, however, the Hamiltonian view was bound to triumph, as the forces of capitalism were behind it and the transportation revolution, with railroads in the vanguard, was irreversible. As time went on, the railroad companies sought to make profits by through-running—that is, by concentrating on long-distance routes on which no changes were required—because this attracted new customers and reduced costs; the obvious corollary was that as the railroads became bigger, they paid less attention to local interests. The growth of the railroads was intimately bound up with the wider development of America as a powerful economic force, and ultimately this process would ride roughshod over parochial concerns.

  The Erie might have failed with its plan to run the railroad on piles, and made a huge initial mistake with its gauge, but the company was responsible for introducing a technical innovation that would become universal on railroads across America: the telegraph. It had already proved its worth during the Erie’s inaugural run of May 1851 when a locomotive developed problems and the next station was alerted by telegraph to ensure that a replacement was ready. Yet despite that success, there was much skepticism about the invention until Charles Minot, the superintendent of the Erie, showed that it could be used as a way of greatly increasing a rail-road’s reliability and traffic, and therefore both its usefulness and its value.

  Minot was one of those big characters of the early railroad industry. He was a judge’s son who chose engineering rather than the law and was appointed as the first superintendent of the railroad. Portly and genial, he also had a fierce temper, which “would blow like a volcano” when someone crossed him.17 And that is precisely what happened when he learned that the train drivers were not making proper use of the telegraphic system that he had installed along the tracks. Minot had made a stab in the dark by persuading the Erie to put up the poles to make use of Morse’s recent invention, the telegraphic machine. However, the railroad’s drivers and signal staff were reluctant to put their trust in the device until Minot showed them its advantages. One day in September 1851, he found himself at the small Turner’s Station18 seated in a westbound train that was delayed while waiting for a late eastbound service. As the railroad was single track throughout, apart from a few passing places at stations, and there was no signaling system, the only form of train regulation to avoid accidents was through the timing of scheduled crossing points. Minot, anxious to continue his journey, barged into the telegraph office and told the operator to wire ahead to Goshen, fourteen miles down the track, to ask if the eastbound train had yet passed. On hearing that it had not, he sent a message—the first-ever telegraphic order19 dispatched in the United States—to hold the train there until further notice. Minot then instructed the train driver, Isaac Lewis, to proceed, but the hapless fellow, “a man of orderly mind and of little imagination,” responded that he’d be damned if “he would run by that thing.”20 Minot took over the controls himself, dispatching Lewis to “ride on the cushions,”21 where the terrified driver took up the backseat of the last wagon, fearing that a head-on crash was inevitable. When Minot reached Goshen, he discovered that the eastbound service had still not arrived. By telegraphing ahead twice more in advance, he finally met the eastbound service three stops down the line, saving more than an hour.

  In fact, the telegraph and the railroad proved to be almost symbiotic inventions. In the pretelegraph era, there would be no way of knowing when a train might next
arrive other than when the smoke could be seen from the nearest high point, usually a water tower, or a specially provided wooden pole fitted with cleats, which were used rather like crows’ nests on ships, where the station agent, equipped with a telescope, could scan the horizon. But now telegraphs provided railroad managers with an unparalleled communication system across their networks. In return, the railroads were indispensable to the telegraph companies, giving them a ready-made route through the countryside, with the added benefit that train staff would quickly be able to spot any break in the system where a pole had fallen down or a wire had snapped. While the original system of Morse code, which uses a series of short and long signals—dots and dashes—to spell out words, had first been developed in the 1830s, it was the spread of the railroads that ensured the telegraph’s rapid development and its financial success. Stations provided handy sites for telegraph offices, and although the railroad had priority use of the system, there was plenty of spare capacity available for business and personal users. There was, though, considerable cost involved in putting up the poles and laying the wires, and it had taken some persuasion by Minot to convince his company of its advantages. The incident at Turner’s Station, however, marked a turning point, and within a decade the telegraph had become universally deployed across the United States. By 1866 Western Union had established total dominance by buying out most of its smaller rivals in an industry that was a natural monopoly. So, too, were the railroads, but, as we shall see, other factors prevented any one railroad corporation from acquiring monopoly power—in contrast to the experience of most other countries.

  The Erie may have been the longest of the early railroads, but the construction delays meant that by the time of its completion, other big players with similarly grand ambitions had emerged. A little to the south, the Pennsylvania was also stretching far into the West. Unlike the Erie, the Pennsylvania was not originally conceived as a trunk line; rather, as was the case with most of its contemporaries, it was developed by local interests to serve their needs. Realizing that the state canal system was inadequate for their transportation requirements, fearing the dominance of the Erie as it took shape farther north, and judging that the technology was now sufficiently developed to overcome the obstacle of the mountain range that separated Pennsylvania’s two biggest cities, the merchants of Philadelphia decided in 1846 to build a line to Pittsburgh. Plans for a 137-mile section between Philadelphia and Harrisburg were approved, signaling the start of what would become one of America’s great railroads. The Pennsylvania Railroad would owe a great deal of its success to its fortuitous choice of John Edgar Thomson as engineer. In fact, the title of “engineer” as applied to these early railroad builders is something of a misnomer. In the pioneering days, the construction of a railroad line required a man at the helm who could cope with all aspects of the business, and, like several of his contemporaries, both in America and in Europe, Thomson was a genuine jack of all trades. Indeed, Albro Martin describes him as “a genius of planning, construction and operation,” who “possessed a consuming curiosity about everything new that was being introduced into American railroading.” Like many talented individuals, he could be difficult, rude, and stubborn—pigheaded was a word routinely associated with him—and tended to do things without consulting his directors. But, fortunately for both parties, he was generally right, and the railroad he built was so good that it was widely regarded as “the standard railroad of America”: “The result was a main line and branches that were laid with a foresight which appears uncanny today.”22

  Thomson was also, perhaps oddly for a Quaker, very good at making money and at the wheeling and dealing that was another necessary part of early railroad management. Perhaps, though, it was his religious beliefs that made him stress the importance of railroads’ reinvesting their profits to keep improving their assets rather than, as so many did, paying high dividends to the shareholders at the cost of establishing the long-term viability of the company. Having completed the first section in 1851, Thomson soon became president of the railroad and oversaw the crucial extension of the line through to Pittsburgh. This involved the building of an expensive and difficult tunnel and the construction of the remarkable 220-degree Horseshoe Curve near Altoona to get through the Allegheny Mountains that was partly designed by Herman Haupt, who later played a key role in the use of railroads in the Civil War (see next chapter). The challenge and complexity of these engineering projects meant that it was not until 1858 that Pennsylvania’s two major cities were connected by rail. Thomson, whose vision had always extended well beyond his home state, did not stop there. He put the cash generated by the success of the line to good use and through a process of acquisition soon had a line all the way to Chicago. In the East, his purchase of a New Jersey railroad gave him terminal facilities on the west bank of the Hudson, with ferries running to New York.

  The New York Central Railroad was also stirring. But, as Holbrook so elegantly puts it, the Central was “not the result of engineering and construction crews [but] rather the creature of lawyers and investors, many of whom might be said to be speculators.”23 It was, in fact, the result of a merger of ten small railroads crossing New York State. Until the creation of the Central, those traveling between Albany and Buffalo in New York State had to use a series of small railroads and make numerous changes. These lesser lines generally bore names that reflected their two termini: the Auburn & Syracuse, the Schenectady & Troy, the Buffalo & Rochester, and so on. Starting with the Mohawk & Hudson, they had been built in the previous two decades along the Mohawk Valley and the Erie Canal, and the service they offered was patchy and unsatisfactory. By the late 1840s, they had combined to offer a through service of sorts, passengers being able to stay in the same cars—owned by the Albany & Schenectady—for the entire duration of their journey, but lengthy delays were routine. In theory the 290 miles between Albany and Buffalo could be covered in fourteen hours—the average of barely twenty miles per hour was in fact not bad for the time— but in practice this was rarely achieved. A hapless traveler—sadly his or her name has not survived—who left Albany one spring day in 1850 made a note of their arduous progress, which included various unexplained stops in sidings and some twelve hours, again unexplained, in Syracuse followed by another six-hour wait in Rochester. The train finally arrived in Buffalo after a journey of more than thirty-eight hours at an average of less than eight miles per hour—about the speed of a gently trotting horse.

  There was clearly money to be made by connecting these lines. The creation of the Central required the vision of a wheeler-dealer, and fortunately one was at hand: Erastus Corning, whose day job was the prosaic task of making nails but who also doubled, more important, as the longtime mayor of Albany. Corning was the president of one of the ten existing New York lines, the 78-mile Utica & Schenectady, a railroad so prosperous that in 1850 its shareholders rewarded him with a plate service worth an astonishing six thousand dollars, a sum equivalent to a present-day banker’s bonus. Corning, who became president of the joint railroad on its creation in 1853, set about enhancing the new combined railroad and offering a far better service: new cars and locomotives were purchased, and the track was improved, ensuring a rapid rise in both passenger and freight traffic. To give a scale of the enterprise, which was probably around the same size as the Erie, the New York Central could lay claim to 542 miles of line and owned 150 wood-burning locomotives, 1,700 freight cars, and just under 200 passenger coaches. Indeed, it fared so well, easily surviving the panic of 1857, that it attracted the attention of a rapacious shipping magnate, one Cornelius Vanderbilt (see Chapter 8).

  In the 1850s, the consolidation of smaller lines to create a larger railroad was a new idea in America, but would be adopted widely across the United States, particularly after the Civil War as the Hamiltonian ethos prevailed. Big companies like the Erie, the Pennsylvania, and the New York Central were still, in the antebellum period, the exception. Most railroads in this era remained small, r
arely connecting with a neighboring company line and, if they did so, requiring passengers to change trains with all the hassle that entailed. No one thought of the railroads as a network; they were viewed, rather, as a series of disparate lines, best illustrated by the lack of any rail connection between lines in towns blessed with more than one railroad. Separate stations were the norm, and therefore railroad maps of the period can be confusing, suggesting links and connections where, in fact, there were none.

  By 1850, America’s railroad mileage had tripled to 9,000. As New York included both the Erie and the Central, it could lay claim to having the most mileage of any state at the midcentury point, with 1,361 miles. Pennsylvania, thanks to its eponymous trunk line, was not far behind. The railroads remained most extensive in the East, but considerable mileage had been constructed in the South. Georgia was beginning to establish the preeminence that it was to maintain for a century, and Atlanta was becoming the hub for a variety of lines. In the old Northwest, Ohio and Michigan were the leaders, but their mileage was still modest. That would change in the next decade, helped by the establishment of Chicago as the nation’s railroad hub.

  Chicago’s dominance was by no means a foregone conclusion. Other western cities such as Sandusky, Ohio, and St. Louis, Missouri, had potential, having been reached early by the iron road, but Chicago had natural advantages that made its location as a railroad hub ideal. When the inaugural section of the Baltimore & Ohio opened in 1830, Chicago had consisted of a few wood cabins and trails scratched out of the marshy land on the southwest corner of Lake Michigan. As soon as it was incorporated in 1833, Chicago boomed. Thanks to its favorable location, it grew rapidly in the 1830s, reaching a population of four thousand by the end of the decade. Yet it came surprisingly late to the railroad, with its first line, the Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, built by William Ogden, not being completed until 1848 when, already, there were innumerable railroads farther to the west. The small, unassuming town, with problems of perpetual flooding because of its position on the banks of Lake Michigan, did not seem natural railroad territory. While the rest of America was busy building railroads in the 1830s and 1840s, Chicagoans were to be convinced that the future lay with plank roads, laid to connect the burgeoning town with surrounding communities and used increasingly by farmers to take their goods into the city. These crude highways were, literally, made of wooden boards nailed into timbers on the ground and, for a time, earned their owners huge dividends from tolls, as Chicago grew rapidly in the 1840s. But they required constant maintenance, as they were damaged by the ever-heavier wagons using them that, incidentally, were wont to bully smaller carts into the adjoining mud.