What was the most significant reason railroads encouraged industrial growth?
the efficient transportation of raw materials and finished goods.
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Just as it opened the markets of the west coast and Asia to the east, it brought products of eastern industry to the growing populace beyond the Mississippi. The railroad ensured a production boom, as industry mined the vast resources of the middle and western continent for use in production.
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.
Railroads were effective, reliable, and faster modes of transportation, edging out competitors such as the steamship. They traveled faster and farther, and carried almost fifty times more freight than steamships could. They were more dependable than any previous mode of transportation, and not impacted by the weather.
Railways were introduced in England in the seventeenth century as a way to reduce friction in moving heavily loaded wheeled vehicles. The first North American gravity road, as it was called, was erected in 1764 for military purposes at the Niagara portage in Lewiston, New York.
With an average speed of 10 miles an hour, railroads were faster than stagecoaches, canalboats, and steamboats, and, unlike water-going vessels, could travel in any season. The transportation revolution sharply reduced the cost of shipping goods to market and stimulated agriculture and industry.
railroads helped industries and cities to grow because it connected much of the country and also increased the amount of national trade which helped cities and industries to grow.
The invention of the steam engine, credited to James Watt in 1774, would prove to be a crucial improvement to rail transportation even though coal mine pumping efficiency was the intended outcome of his invention.
The railroads were the key to economic growth in the second half of the nineteenth century. Besides making it possible to ship agricultural and manufactured goods throughout the country cheaply and efficiently, they directly contributed to the development of other industries.