What railroad was built after the Civil War?

The Railroad Act of 1862 put government support behind the transcontinental railroad and helped create the Union Pacific Railroad, which subsequently joined with the Central Pacific at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869, and signaled the linking of the continent.



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The first rails were spiked in January of 1863. However, the bulk of the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad would not truly start until after the end of the Civil War. Construction of the railroad boomed in May of 1866.

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Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 on July 1, 1862, and the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) and the Union Pacific Railroad were authorized by Congress.

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The line from San Francisco, California, to Toledo, Ohio, was completed in 1909, consisting of the Western Pacific Railway, Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, Missouri Pacific Railroad, and Wabash Railroad.

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The industrialized Union possessed an enormous advantage over the Confederacy — they had 20,000 miles of railroad track, more than double the Confederacy's 9,000 miles.

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Locomotives and tracks began to wear out. By 1863 a quarter of the South's locomotives needed repairs and the speed of train travel in the South had dropped to only 10 miles an hour (from 25 miles an hour in 1861). Fuel was a problem as well. Southern locomotives were fueled by wood--a great deal of it.

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While much of the original transcontinental railroad tracks are still in use, the complete, intact line fell out of operation in 1904, when a shorter route bypassed Promontory Summit.

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Before the Civil War the South was one of the richest regions in the world, standing just behind Britain and the Northern states. More than half of the richest one percent of Americans were Southerners.

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John Stevens is considered to be the father of American railroads. In 1826 Stevens demonstrated the feasibility of steam locomotion on a circular experimental track constructed on his estate in Hoboken, New Jersey, three years before George Stephenson perfected a practical steam locomotive in England.

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There are six Class I freight railroad companies in the United States: BNSF Railway, CSX Transportation, Canadian National Railway, CPKC, Norfolk Southern Railway, and Union Pacific Railroad. Canadian National also operates in Canada and CPKC operates Canada and Mexico.

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Transcontinental railways are railroads that run across continents. The Trans-Siberian Railway (TSR) in Russia is the world's longest railway system.

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