How much were train tickets in the 1800s?

Passenger train travel in the 1880s generally cost 2-3 cents per mile. Transcontinental (New York to San Francisco) ticket rates as of June 1870 were $136 for first class in a Pullman sleeping car; $110 for second class; $65 for third or “emigrant” class seats on a bench.



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Rail travel may even be cheaper today, in real terms, than 150 years ago. With $1.30 in 1860 equaling about $35 today, Amtrak's $11 Baltimore-Washington fare looks like a bargain. One travel reality hasn't changed: the toll of war.

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In 1870 it took approximately seven days and cost as little as $65 for a ticket on the transcontinental line from New York to San Francisco; $136 for first class in a Pullman sleeping car; $110 for second class; and $65 for a space on a third- or “emigrant”-class bench.

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The train would make stops where you could get out to eat, or even spend the night. Eventually trains had eating and sleeping cars so stops were only long enough for passengers to get on/off, and freight to be exchanged.

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The author was just one of the thousands of people who flocked to the Transcontinental Railroad beginning in 1869. The railroad, which stretched nearly 2,000 miles between Iowa, Nebraska and California, reduced travel time across the West from about six months by wagon or 25 days by stagecoach to just four days.

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Accidents were compounded by running trains in both directions on single tracks and hasty and cheap trestle construction. In 1875, there were 1,201 train accidents. Five years later, in 1880, that rate had increased to 8,216 in one year.

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Before the air brake, railroad engineers would stop trains by cutting power, braking their locomotives and using the whistle to signal their brakemen. The brakemen would turn the brakes in one car and jump to the next to set the brakes there, and then to the next, etc.

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In the early days of British railways, trains ran up to 78 mph by the year 1850. However, they ran at just 30mph in 1830. As railway technology and infrastructure progressed, train speed increased accordingly. In the U.S., trains ran much slower, reaching speeds of just 25 mph in the west until the late 19th century.

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By 1857, which is still within one lifetime from someone born around 1800, travel by rail (the fastest way to get around at the time — remember that the Wright brothers were not even born yet and air travel was far off in the future) had gotten significantly faster.

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The volume of water expands as it turns to steam inside the boiler, creating a high pressure. The expansion of steam pushes the pistons that connect to the driving wheels that operate the locomotive. Coal or oil are the fuels used for heating the water (coal is shown in the diagram).

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A voyage from the East Coast to California around Cape Horn was 17,000 miles long and could easily take five months. There was a shorter alternative: sailing to Panama, crossing the isthmus by foot or horseback, and sailing to California from Central America's Pacific Coast.

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In 1934, Flying Scotsman achieved the first authenticated 100 mph (161 km/h) by a steam locomotive.

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Most Shinkansen trains operate at speeds of about 500 kilometers per hour (200 to 275 miles per hour). As new technologies are developed and instituted, future trains may achieve even greater velocities.

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The simple answer is, “Because we don't want them.” The slightly longer answer is, “because the fastest trains are slower than flying; the most frequent trains are less convenient than driving; and trains are almost always more expensive than either flying or driving.”

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Trains cannot collide with each other if they are not permitted to occupy the same section of track at the same time, so railway lines are divided into sections known as blocks. In normal circumstances, only one train is permitted in each block at a time. This principle forms the basis of most railway safety systems.

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Train wrecks were shockingly common in the last half of the 1800s. Train travel was quite safe in the first half century of the 1800s. Trains didn't go very fast and there weren't many miles of track laid down. But around 1853, the number of train wrecks and people killed on trains suddenly rose sharply.

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