First Efforts.

Most of the first railroads in America, such as the two-mile-long "granite railroad" of Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1826, were short routes intended only to ship bulk commodities to or from the nearest port, steamboat landing, or canal. The early lines did not even use steam power but relied on horses, mules, oxen, and in some instances sails to push the small carriages over wooden rails (sometimes with iron covers) resting on the ground. It was the Erie Canal that finally prompted the construction of modern interregional steam railroads. The first such railroad in America started with an 1827 meeting by a group of Baltimore merchants who assembled to "take under consideration the best means of restoring to the city of Baltimore that portion of the western trade which [had] recently been diverted" to New York by the completion of the Erie Canal. Their solution was...