A railroad, called railway in Great Britain, is a form of land transportation in which a permanent roadway with parallel rails provides a track for cars drawn by locomotives or for self-propelled motor units. Even before locomotives were perfected, such cars were pulled by horses and other animals. The principle of the flanged wheel (one having a projecting rim to guide it along a track) rolling on iron or steel rails furnishes a low-cost, high-volume, reliable mode of transport for both freight and passengers. When railroads appeared in the early 19th century, they soon gained a major role in the Industrial Revolution, and the first successful lines were those built in such developing industrial nations as England, France, and the United States. By the mid-19th century railroads had proven superior in several ways to earlier forms of transportation, such as turnpikes, canals, and steamboats. (See the article \Ttransportation\t for a discussion of the various modes of transport.) Later, as industrial development reached Asia, Africa, South America, and Australia, railroads appeared on those continents. By the early decades of the 20th century, nearly 1,440,000 km (900,000 mi) of railroad had been built in the world, with some mileage in nearly every nation. By the 1970s this total had declined to about 1,240,000 km (775,000 mi), divided roughly as follows: North America, 36%; Europe, 34%; Asia, 12%; South America, 8%; Africa, 6%; and Australasia, 4%. Railroad History As early as the 16th century, crude railways--horse-drawn wagons with wooden wheels and rails--were used in mining operations in England and western Europe. By the 18th century their use was improved with the introduction of cast-iron wheels and rails. In England horse power began to be replaced by the power of the \Tsteam engine\t when Richard \TTrevithick\t, John Blenkinsop, and William Hedley successfully invented, built, and operated several steam locomotives between 1797 and 1813. George \TStephenson\t built and equipped the Stockton & Darlington Railway between 1823 and 1825. This English line, 32 km (20 mi) long, was the first public railway in the world to be powered by a steam locomotive. Railroads in the United States. Following the pioneer work of British inventor-engineers, the first railroads appeared in the United States during the late 1820s. In 1827 the merchants of Baltimore, Md., chartered the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, hoping to increase their share of the trade with western states; it opened in 1830. The Delaware & Hudson Canal and Railroad Company in 1829 purchased a British-built locomotive, the STOURBRIDGE \Tlion\t, but found it too rigid and heavy for track in the U.S. On Christmas Day, 1830, the South Carolina Railroad began passenger service on a 9.6-km (6-mi) stretch of track with the U.S.-built \TBest Friend of Charleston\t, becoming the first railroad in the nation to use steam power in regular service. In the 1830s the new form of transport gained acceptance, although there was some opposition, especially from canal owners and stagecoach operators worried about the competition to their businesses. The great bulk of the public, however, welcomed the railroad. Five of the six New England states had some rail mileage by 1838, and even such western states as Kentucky and Indiana were projecting new lines. In 1840 more than 4,480 km (2,800 mi) of railroad were in operation, most near the Atlantic seacoast. The novelty of rail travel, the relatively high speed possible, and the advantage of year-round service combined to make passenger traffic revenue larger than freight on many early lines. In 1850, 60% of the nation's rail mileage was located in New England and mid-Atlantic states, and the 14,400 km (9,000 mi) of road represented a total railroad investment of more than $300 million. By that time, U.S. railroads were clearly superior to turnpikes, canals, and steamboats. Shippers welcomed rail service, which was dependable throughout the year, cheaper than the Conestoga wagon, faster than the canal packet, and more direct in route than the river steamboat. Perhaps no decade of rail growth in the United States was more important than the years following 1850. What had been a scattering of short lines from Maine to Georgia then grew into a rail network serving all the states east of the Mississippi River. By 1860 the total mileage was more than 48,000 km (30,000 mi), with much of the new construction in the West, especially in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Many of the new lines in these states were extensions of such eastern lines as the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Erie, and the Baltimore & Ohio. This rapid western construction caused a shift in the total traffic flow from the north-south axis of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to an east-west axis of trunk line railroads serving eastern seaports. Construction was so rapid that by the late 1850s rail mileage in the United States was nearly equal to that in the rest of the world. When the Civil War erupted in 1861, it was the first U.S. conflict in which railroads had an important role. Both sides made massive troop and supply movements by rail during the war, and basic weaknesses in southern railroads contributed to the ultimate defeat of the Confederacy. The period between the Civil War and World War I was a golden age for U.S. railroads. For nearly 50 years after 1865 no new modes of transport seriously challenged this developing mode of transportation. A great expansion in mileage occurred in the same years that many new technical advances made possible major improvements in the operating efficiency of railroads. During those five decades, the rail network increased from 56,000 km (35,000 mi) in 1865 to 406,400 km (254,000 mi) in 1916. The completion (May 10, 1869) of the Union Pacific-Central Pacific line, which covered 2,848 km (1,780 mi) from the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean, was one of the first major building efforts after the Civil War. In the next 25 years four other \Ttranscontinental railroad\t lines were built. Four of the five Pacific railroads, along with dozens of other western lines, were aided in these years by land grants from the federal government. This aid program was started when land was given to the Illinois Central-Mobile & Ohio route in 1850. All of the land grant roads--which between 1850 and the 1870s received 53 million ha (131 million acres) of public land--were required to give the federal government reduced transportation rates of about 50%. During the decades after the Civil War, a host of technical advances made possible a new integration and uniformity of railroad service. These innovations included the introduction of more powerful locomotives, the use of larger and more varied types of cars, the general adoption of a track gauge (the distance between the inside faces of the rails) known as standard track gauge (1.44 m/4 ft 81/2 in), and the general acceptance of the air \Tbrake\t invented by George \TWestinghouse\t, improved couplers, and standard \Ttime zones\t. These contributions permitted a more economical rail service, which brought a major reduction in freight rates--from more than 2 cents a ton-mile at the end of the Civil War to less than 1 cent a ton-mile in the early 20th century. In these years railroad freight revenue became increasingly greater than passenger revenue. The reduction in freight rates and the improved service promoted industrialization, the expansion of urban population, the shift from regional to national markets, and the growth of the nation's modern interdependent economy. The decades prior to World War I were also years of corruption and various forms of discrimination. False-front construction companies used in building western lines gave extra profits to builders such as Thomas Clark \TDurant\t, who helped organize the \TCredit Mobilier of America\t for building the Union Pacific. Cornelius Vanderbilt (see \TVanderbilt\t family), James \TFisk\t, and Jay \TGould\t were all masters at inflating and manipulating the securities of their lines. The evils of railroad pools, rebates, discriminatory freight rates, and charging "all the traffic will bear" contributed to agitation by western farmers for Granger laws, which regulated railroads and their freight rates in the 1870s (see \TGranger movement\t). After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that interstate commerce could be regulated only by the federal government, the U.S. Congress in 1887 approved federal regulation of railroads with the Interstate Commerce Act, which provided for establishment of the \TInterstate Commerce Commission\t (ICC). Much more stringent regulations were imposed in later federal laws. Early in the 20th century the monopoly that had so long been held by railroads was challenged by a number of new modes of transport: electric interurbans (lines that connected neighboring towns); thousands and soon millions of private automobiles; intercity buses; larger and larger trucks; airplanes carrying mail, passengers, and high-priority freight; and a growing network of pipelines. As a result, railroads in the United States went into decline after World War I, with substantial losses in mileage, employment, and traffic. The heavy wartime traffic from 1941 through 1945 helped the railways recover from the hard times of the Depression of the 1930s and to retire a major portion of their debt. Even this, however, did not create large profits for the industry. Following World War II the railroads replaced the steam locomotive with more efficient \TDiesel\t-electric locomotives and introduced new, more efficient freight services. Nevertheless, by the mid-1970s, ten railroads in the Northeast and Midwest were in bankruptcy. During the years after World War II, the federal government has tended to favor competing modes of transport with more generous subsidy programs and with less stringent regulation than those covering railroads. The 1971 introduction of the federally subsidized passenger service known as \TAmtrak\t helped to relieve railroads of the annual passenger service deficits they had known for many years. The Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act of 1976 established the Consolidated Rail Corp. (ConRail), which, with federal assistance, successfully renovated portions of six bankrupt Northeast railroads into a single viable freight system. In 1987, after having cut some 60,000 jobs and spent more than $7 billion on modernizing track and rolling stock, the federal government "privatized" the system by selling Conrail shares to private investors for a total of $l.65 billion. The Staggers Rail Act of 1980 substantially reduced the Interstate Commerce Commission's jurisdiction over railroads, permitting rail operators greater freedom to set rates, abandon or sell unprofitable lines, and offer service innovations designed to attract business and reduce costs. The new competitive environment afforded by Staggers sparked a restructuring of the industry through mergers and consolidations, and stimulated advances in new technology. Railroads in the United States are classified according to annual gross operating revenues determined by the Interstate Commerce Commission. Class I carriers must earn a minimum of $50 million in 1978 dollars. The 25 Class I freight railroads account for most of the freight moved by rail. Amtrak, also a Class I railroad, moves virtually all intercity passengers. In the 1980s, the United States had 270,312 km (167.964 mi) of rail lines. Other Railroads in the Western Hemisphere. The total rail mileage in Canada, Mexico, and Central America amounts to about a third of that in the United States. In Canada the first rail service started in 1836, and by 1880 the network had expanded to about 11,200 km (6,960 mi). The \TCanadian Pacific Railway\t was completed across the Rockies to the Pacific by 1885. The current mileage in Canada, nearly all built with standard gauge, is almost 94,000 km (58,400 mi). Two great railroads, the federally owned \TCanadian National Railways\t and the privately owned Canadian Pacific, constitute most of the nation's rail mileage. In Mexico, the majority of the 20,200 km (12,550 mi) of track is built in standard gauge, and the government-owned National Railways of Mexico operates nearly two-thirds of the total mileage. Most of the limited mileage in Central America is of light construction narrow gauge. More than 96,000 km (59,065 mi) of railway are in operation in South America, with much built in narrow gauge. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Peru all built their first lines during the 1850s, but some other countries did not construct their first roads until the 1870s. Today the major mileage in the continent is located in three countries: Argentina (34,800 km/21,600 mi), Brazil (30,000 km/18,600 mi), and Chile (8,500 km/5,300 mi). Most lines started as private ventures, but today the great bulk of the mileage is state owned. The Railroads of Europe. After the United States, the greatest concentration of rail mileage is found in Europe. As noted earlier the first railroads were those developed and built in England in the second and third decades of the 19th century. After the success of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, others quickly followed. The Liverpool & Manchester, which opened in 1830, used steam power for both passenger and freight service and soon was taking traffic away from turnpike and canal competitors. Most British railways were fairly prosperous, inasmuch as their traffic expanded with the industrial growth in Britain. Quite early the government insisted upon the uniform use of standard (1.44 m/4 ft 8-1/2 in) gauge and later passed laws concerning the use of improved brakes and higher safety standards. During World War I the government took control, but not ownership, of all the lines, and in 1948 all the railroads in Great Britain were nationalized and reorganized as British Railways. Increased competition from highway transport has resulted in the abandonment of many branch lines. Thus, the 1987 rail mileage in the country was 17,600 km (11,000 mi), compared with 28,800 km (17,000 mi) in 1900, the heyday of the British rail system. France had its first railway line by 1828, and Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Russia all had some railroads in operation by the 1830s. Countries that were slower to industrialize were building railways by 1850. Most of the European countries followed the English in using standard gauge, but Spain and Portugal both adopted a gauge of 1.66 m (5 ft 6 in), whereas Russian roads were all built with a gauge of 1.5 m (5 ft). European railroads, like those of Great Britain, are generally state owned and operated. Russian lines were all nationalized with the revolution, and both German and French roads were state owned before World War II. Aside from the \TUSSR\t, the European nations with the greatest mileage today are Germany, 42,700 km (26,550 mi) and France, 37,100 km (23,050 mi). Unlike some industrial states, the \TUSSR\t has continued to build railroads in recent years and in 1986 had a total mileage (Europe and Asia) of about 145,500 km (90,400 mi), second only to the United States. In 1891, Russia started the \TTrans-Siberian Railroad\t, and when the line from Moscow to Vladivostok was completed in 1916, it was the longest continuous rail line in the world (9,259 km/5,787 mi). Because of the great size of the \TUSSR\t today, its large population, and its limited highway transport, the railroads of the Soviet Union lead the world in freight service (ton-miles per year) and are second in passenger service (passenger-miles per year). Railroads of Asia, Africa, and Australasia. Other than the Soviet Republic, the major Asiatic nations with extensive railroad systems are India, China, and Japan. India's first railroads were built in the 1850s and followed English patterns, except in gauge. Indian lines were built extensively in the 1.66 m (5 ft 6 in) gauge and also in the meter (3 ft 3 in) gauge. More than 61,000 km (37,900 mi) of railroad are in operation in India today. Nearly the entire Indian system has been state owned since 1947. China built its first lines in the 1870s, but only 12,000 km (7,500 mi) were in operation by 1920. Much additional mileage has been built since the People's Republic of China came to power in 1949, and the present state-owned rail system operates nearly 35,200 km (22,000 mi) of lines. Japan built its first lines in the 1870s and today has nearly 27,200 km (17,000 mi) in operation, most of it in 1.05 m (3 ft 6 in) gauge; three-quarters of it is owned by the state. Japanese lines are built to very high standards and carry a heavy passenger traffic. The development of railroads in Africa accompanied the extensive European colonization of the 19th century. Today the Republic of South Africa has the most mileage, with a state-owned system of about 20,800 km (13,000 mi). The first railroad in Australia was opened in 1854, and much mileage in a variety of gauge has been built since. Most of the present 40,000-km (25,000-mi) rail system is state owned. RAILROAD OPERATIONS All modes of transportation may be considered to include three essential elements: the route or way, the motive power, and the vehicle or carrier. For railroads these three elements would be: (1) the roadbed and track, including necessary fills, cuts, bridges, and tunnels, (2) the locomotive, which may be steam, electric, or diesel-electric, and (3) the rolling stock, including passenger cars of various types and a variety of freight cars. When the first railroads appeared in the 19th century, they often replaced turnpikes, river barges, and canal boats. A major change occurred in the complexity of transportation technology as iron track on a graded roadbed replaced a simple road or a winding river, as the steam locomotive took over from a river current or a team of mules, and as a 40-passenger railroad coach replaced a river barge or a Conestoga wagon. Roadbed and Track. In the planning and construction of a new railroad, the first step is for surveyors and civil engineers to seek out and survey a route, then establish standards relative to grade (inclination of track), curvature, gauge, and quality of construction. Builders of railroads must make an early decision concerning track gauge. Because the English were the pioneer builders of railroads and locomotives, their adoption of a standard gauge of 1.44 m (4 ft 81/2 in) was to be widely followed. It is probable that this gauge was adopted in England because it was the wheel spacing used on the \Lwagon\ls and tramways of prerailroad England. The railroads of the world have used a variety of gauges ranging from under 0.6 m (2 feet) to as much as 2.1 m (7 ft). There are some economies of construction that result from using narrow gauge, and therefore many mountain or frontier lines have been built to narrow gauge. Today standard gauge is universally used in North America and Europe and is found on about three-fifths of the world's total mileage. Once the roadbed is fully graded, wooden ties, or sleepers, are distributed, and the rails are laid and spiked. Later a ballast of crushed rock or slag is applied, the track is aligned, and the ballast is tamped, or compacted, around the ties. The earliest rails were made of wood; later, track often consisted of iron-strap rails fastened to long wooden stringers. In the 1830s, Robert L. Stevens of the Camden & Amboy Railroad designed the iron T-rail, which was fastened to ties with spikes. This type of rail soon became standard. Early rail often weighed no more than 20-25 kg/m (40-50 lb/yd), but heavier trains required heavier rail, and today's main lines are laid with rail weighing 50-70 kg/m (100-140 lb/yd). By the 1860s and 1870s, steel rail was beginning to replace iron on most heavily used lines. The standard rail length in the United States is 11.9 m (39 ft), while in Europe it is 30 m (98 ft 5 in). Welded rail, in lengths of 0.8 km (0.5 mi) or more, is becoming common today. The lifetime of the wooden tie was extended to 20 years or more through the use of the wood preservative \Tcreosote\t. Successful experiments with concrete ties have been made in the United States and in Europe. Locomotives. The first motive power on many railroads was horses or mules, but most lines quickly adopted steam locomotives. As trains grew longer and heavier during the 19th century, so did the locomotives. Peter Cooper's tiny \TTom Thumb\t in 1830 developed perhaps one horsepower, while the Union Pacific "Big Boys" built in the 1940s weighed about 400 tons and developed 7,000 horsepower. In the early 20th century, electric locomotives were adopted in many countries, but by the 1950s most railroads were shifting to diesel motive power. In 1976, 30,000 mainline locomotives were in use in the United States. Further details of locomotive development may be found in the article \Tlocomotive\t. Cars and Rolling Stock. The early railroad passenger and freight cars were little more than stagecoaches and wagons fitted with flanged wheels. In the United States it did not take long for passenger cars and freight cars to be lengthened, with rigid axles being replaced by four-wheel swivel, or bogie, trucks at each end to improve the turning characteristics. European cars generally were shorter and frequently had only four wheels instead of the eight common in the United States. The two-truck passenger coach became common in England and Europe only in the last two decades of the 19th century. By World War I, wooden cars, both passenger and freight, were giving way to those made of steel. By the late 1830s, Americans were riding in elongated cars with double seats on either side of a central aisle. With a capacity of from 40 to 50 persons, they were similar in basic design to those of the mid-20th century. In contrast, many British and European passenger cars consisted of several six- to eight-seat compartments with a corridor at one side of the coach. Sleeping cars were introduced in the United States by the time of the Civil War, or before, but they appeared in England only after 1870. In the late 1860s, George M. \TPullman\t was building dining cars and sleeping cars for some American lines. Within the next 25 years electric lighting, steam heat, and vestibules (a flexible covered passageway between cars) were being added to much first-class passenger equipment. In the mid-20th century, streamlining, lightweight cars, domed observation cars, and economy slumber coaches were introduced by some U.S. lines as they sought to halt a decline in railroad passenger traffic. Changes in both size and type have appeared in freight equipment. In the mid-19th century, U.S. freight cars tended to be of three types: the open-top car, the boxcar, and the flatcar, each having a capacity of no more than 10 tons. European freight cars have increased only modestly in size, while the capacity of American cars has expanded greatly. The average capacity of freight cars in the United States in 1975 was 66 metric tons (73 U.S. tons). Since the Civil War many new types of freight equipment have been added. In the last decades of the 19th century livestock cars, refrigerator cars, and tank cars were introduced. In recent decades the covered hopper car (which discharges cargo through the floor), the multilevel rack car for automobiles, and the piggyback flatcar have been added to the freight equipment roster. The loss of much traffic to highway trucks and pipelines in the last generation has reduced the need for tank cars, stock cars, and boxcars in the United States. In 1976, there were 1,730,000 railroad freight cars in use in the United States, with 52,000 new freight cars produced annually. In 1977, U.S. railroads transported 7,480 million metric tons of freight. Traffic Control. As railroads expanded and developed, one area of high priority was internal communication and the necessary control and direction of all train movement. Because the telegraph was invented at about the same time that railroads were appearing in the United States and western Europe, this new mode of communication was soon adopted and widely used by most railroads. By the turn of the century the telephone began to supplement the telegraph. In recent years microwave systems, often tied in with modern computers, have been adopted by several roads. In the control of actual train movement, division dispatchers in telegraphic contact with station agents direct the use of various types of \Tsignaling\t devices, which are obeyed by locomotive engineers and firemen. Various types of trackside signals and \Lsemaphore\ls used in the mid-19th century were improved in the 1860s when a manual block signal system was introduced. Later a system of manual (and then electrical) interlocking made it impossible for a signalman to line up signals and switches in conflict with each other. Soon after World War I, a system of automatic train control was introduced. Today some railroads use Centralized Traffic Control, which permits a single operator-dispatcher to control all train movements over distances as extensive as several hundred kilometers or miles. Management and Labor. As the United States accepted railroads in the second quarter of the 19th century, this transportation mode quickly became the only big business in the nation. In both the United States and the rest of the world, the large railroad was often organized much like an army, with line and staff functions. The actual operations were run by divisions of the road, often in segments of 160-320 km (100-200 mi), and overall management was by a headquarters staff situated in a major city. The diversity of railroad occupations today is shown by an ICC report of the 496,000 employees (1976) working for the Class I U.S. railroads. (A Class I railroad was one with annual operating revenues of at least $5 million; after January 1, 1978, at least $50 million.) The report lists 128 different occupational groups. A grouping of these occupations into larger units yields the following breakdown: executive and staff (16,482, or 3.3% of total), professional and clerical (104,332, or 21%), maintenance-of-way and structures (88,576, or 17.8%), maintenance-of-equipment and stores (106,108, or 21.4%), and transportation, including station, yard, engine, and train (180,993, or 36.5%). Four of these five labor groupings, all except the executive group, are almost totally unionized. The first groups of railroad labor to organize were the operating personnel: engineers established their union in 1863, conductors in 1868, firemen and enginemen in 1873, and trainmen in 1883. PROBLEMS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS FOR TODAY'S RAILROADS Nearly all railroads today face serious and continuing financial problems. Unlike most industrial and manufacturing concerns, the rail industry requires a very large investment to produce modest annual revenues. Furthermore, the constant low rate of return makes it difficult for the industry to attract new capital. The rail industry contends that railroads are overregulated at the same time that the federal government has favored competing modes of transport with generous subsidies. It also claims that the ICC has been slow in approving mergers and in permitting the abandonment of excess trackage. A further point made by the rail industry is that trucks roll on a highway system that is largely subsidized, and air carriers also are subsidized. If U.S. railroads in 1966 had received the same subsidy as the air carriers (on a basis of passenger-miles of travel), the assistance received would have covered seven-eighths of the rail passenger deficit incurred that year. These continuing problems are often given as an explanation of why most of the world's railways are now state owned. Today the only substantial rail mileage still privately owned is in Canada and the United States. Competition from other forms of transportation may have been harder on U.S. railroads than on those in Europe and Asia. This premise is especially true for passenger traffic, because the longer distances in the United States and the greater number of private automobiles owned by Americans both favor air and auto travel over that by rail. In the United States in 1976, less than 6% of the commercial intercity travel and less than 1% of the total intercity travel were by rail. In the early 1970s, rail travel in Japan was 15 times that in the United States, while France, West Germany, Italy, and Great Britain each had a volume of rail travel twice that of the United States. The passenger trains in Japan may be fast, and those in Europe may run on time, but none of these nationalized rail systems is profitable. Today it is rare for a state-owned railroad system to be profitable. Even in decline, railroads, providing the world with the inherent economy of the flanged wheel running on a steel rail, will not soon become obsolete. They furnish an economical and fuel-efficient mode of land transport--a gallon of diesel fuel will haul about four times as many ton-miles by rail as by truck. The importance of railroads around the world today can be seen in the high priority given to the prevention of any work stoppage that threatens to shut them down. Railroads still have much to offer industrial nations that have a continuing concern about their total environment and the conservation of their energy resources. John F. Stover Bibliography: Allen, Cecil J., Modern Railways (1959; repr. 1973); Ball, Don, America's Railroads: The Second Generation (1979) and Railroads: An American Journey (1975); Course, Edwin, Railways Then and Now (1979); Hastings, Paul, Railroads: an International History (1972); Holbrook, Stewart H., The Story of American Railroads (1947); Jensen, Oliver, The American Heritage History of Railroads in America (1975); Nock, Oswald S., ed., The Encyclopedia of Railroads (1977) and Steam Railways of Britain (1967); Saunders, Richard, The Railroad Mergers and the Coming of Conrail (1978); Southerland, Thomas C., and McCleery, William, The Way to Go (1973); Stover, John F., The Life and Decline of the American Railroad (1970); Theroux, Paul, The Great Railway Bazaar (1975).