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Likewise, railroads changed the style of transportation. For the common person in the early 1800s, transportation was often traveled by horse or stagecoach. The network of trails along which coaches navigated were riddled with ditches, potholes, and stones. This made travel fairly uncomfortable.
The railroads wanted experienced European farmers who could sell small farms in Germany or Scandinavia and use the gold to buy much larger farms. The railroads subsidizes travel for prospective buyers and their families and machinery. The sold farmland on good credit terms, such as 10% down and ten years to pay. [26]
July 15 – Sidney Breese, U.S. senator from Illinois known as the "father of the Illinois Central Railroad" (d. 1878). July 29 – George Bradshaw, English cartographer, printer and publisher and the originator of the railway timetable (d. 1853).
From 1850 to 1871, the railroads received more than 175 million acres (71 million ha) of public land – an area more than one tenth of the whole United States and larger in area than Texas. [14] Railroad expansion provided new avenues of migration into the American interior.
Financing of railroads provided the basis for a dramatic expansion of the private (non-governmental) financial system. Construction of railroads was far more expensive than factories: in 1860, the combined total of railroad stocks and bonds was $1.8 billion; in 1897, it reached $10.6 billion (compared to a total national debt of $1.2 billion).
Railroads also needed to communicate over a vast network in order to keep track of freight and equipment. [80] Consequently, railroads installed telegraphs lines on their existing right-of-ways. By 1852 there were 22,000 miles of telegraph lines in the U.S., compared to 10,000 miles of track. [7]: 469
Railroads played a large role in the development of the United States from the Industrial Revolution in the North-east 1810–1850 to the settlement of the West 1850–1890. The American railroad mania began with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1828 and flourished until the Panic of 1873 bankrupted many companies and temporarily ended growth.
Railways were made practical by the widespread introduction of inexpensive puddled iron after 1800, the rolling mill for making rails, and the development of the high-pressure steam engine also around 1800. Reducing friction was one of the major reasons for the success of railroads compared to wagons.