The “golden age” of rail travel in America was the period between 1900 and the late 1940's. During those years, most travel was done by train and some of it in luxury.
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The Gilded Age was a period of economic growth as the United States jumped to the lead in industrialization ahead of Britain. The nation was rapidly expanding its economy into new areas, especially heavy industry like factories, railroads, and coal mining.
Robber BaronsThey soon accumulated vast amounts of money and dominated every major industry including the railroad, oil, banking, timber, sugar, liquor, meatpacking, steel, mining, tobacco and textile industries.
Railroads became a major industry, stimulating other heavy industries such as iron and steel production. These advances in travel and transport helped drive settlement in the western regions of North America and were integral to the nation's industrialization.
Everything from food, to lumber, to motor vehicles is transported on the railways, and our society as we know it simply could not function without them.
Railroads are the most efficient transportation mode for moving goods on the earth's surface. Railroads are of particular importance for the movement of commodities that heavy and moved in bulk over long distances where the transportation spend represents a large portion of the total delivered cost.
By 1900, much of the nation's railroad system was in place. The railroad opened the way for the settlement of the West, provided new economic opportunities, stimulated the development of town and communities, and generally tied the country together.
Misguided railroad regulation was a major factor behind the rail industry's decline. For example, the ICC set maximum and minimum rates for rail shipments, with rates often unrelated to costs or demand.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the rapid growth of truck and barge competition (aided by tens of billions of dollars in federal funding for construction of the interstate highway and inland waterway systems) and huge ongoing losses in passenger operations led to more railroad bankruptcies service abandonments and ...