The first to be chartered and built was the Granite Railway of Massachusetts, which ran approximately three miles (1826). The first regular carrier of passengers and freight was the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, completed on February 28, 1827.
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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.
The rail line, also called the Great Transcontinental Railroad and later the Overland Route, was predominantly built by the Central Pacific Railroad Company of California (CPRR) and Union Pacific (with some contribution by the Western Pacific Railroad Company) over public lands provided by extensive US land grants.
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.
Route of the first American transcontinental railroad from Sacramento, California, to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Other railroads connected at Council Bluffs to cities throughout the East and Midwest.
The Union Pacific Railroad Company began laying tracks in Omaha, Nebraska in 1863. That same year, the Central Pacific Railroad Company began laying tracks in Sacramento, California.
The US rail network, with an operating route length over 250,000km, is the biggest in the world. Freight lines constitute about 80% of the country's total rail network, while the total passenger network spans about 35,000km.
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.