The United States followed this lead very closely. In 1828 the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company built a line from its mines to its canal at Honesdale. This was a private coal road, however, and may best be compared to the Stockton & Darlington Railway. The first public railway operated by steam was the Mohawk & Hudson Railway, from Albany to Schenectady, 16 miles, which was opened in 1831. The Baltimore & Ohio Railway was the first railway enterprise of more than local character, being designed to open communication with the Ohio River, a distance of 400 miles. It was chartered in 1827, commenced in 1828, completed to Ellicott’s Mills (13 miles) in 1830, and to Washington (40 miles) in 1834. It is one of the great monuments of the American railway system, and it was examined by government commissions from Russia and Austria in 1831 and 1849.
In speaking of the railway we unconsciously associate with it the steam locomotive, since the two are so entirely interdependent. Railways operated by horses, or by cables and stationary engines, could never have become the great civilizing and commercial medium which the railway operated by swift locomotives has become. Similarly, the development of the locomotive grew apace, as soon as it was recognized that the smooth track of the railway—and not the rough track of the highway—was to be its field of operation.
At the end of the nineteenth century, after seventy years of development, the world has nearly 500,000 miles of railway, on which locomotives of 80 to 110 tons in weight (without their tenders) haul freight trains of 1000 to 3000 tons. Passenger trains, too, are run at speeds of 40 to 75 miles per hour in regular daily service, and even make bursts of speed at 80 to 100 miles per hour. The fact that in 1890 Europe and North America had about 320,000 miles of railway out of a grand total of 370,000 miles, indicates that this phase of nineteenth-century progress has been due mainly to peoples of Christian civilization, and besides this, it must be remembered that the railways of Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America have been mainly built by the same peoples. The central regions of these four latter geographical divisions are fields for twentieth-century development.
The great trunk lines of railway communication are hardly more important than the vast network of branch and minor lines which connect and intersect them. These latter lines bring the people of smaller towns and country districts into closer relation with the large cities, the centres of industrial and intellectual energy, enterprise, and wealth. They thus tend to reduce isolation and dependence upon purely local resources.
THE OLD STAGE COACH.
Railways also serve important military and strategic purposes. In India many of the railways have been built with a view to the defense of the northeastern frontier, and many European governments assume certain military authority over the railways. The first trans-continental railways of the United States and Canada were largely assisted by government subsidies on account of their great importance for the transportation of troops. The railway also serves purposes of pleasure, as well as of commerce and war. Not only do the ordinary railways carry much tourist and pleasure travel, but lines are built exclusively for such travel. Some of these take people to the summer and pleasure resorts, while others cater to the inherent desire of man to ascend great altitudes and to behold the world in its beauty and grandeur spread below them. For this purpose alone have railways been built to the summits of the Rockies, the Alps, and other mountain ranges.
At the end of the century the United States has about 185,000 miles of railway, which have cost about $53,000 per mile and earn $6500 per mile. Great Britain has about 22,000 miles, which have cost $225,000 per mile and earn about $20,000 per mile. A large proportion of this high cost of construction is due to the high prices for land and to the preliminary parliamentary proceedings which are necessary in securing the right to build railways. The average cost per mile of railways in different countries is as follows:—
| United States | $53,000 |
| India | 75,000 |
| Japan | 92,000 |
| France | 100,000 |
| Germany | 101,500 |
| Switzerland (ordinary) | $119,300 |
| Do (mountain) | 162,500 |
| Russia | 122,000 |
| Austria-Hungary | 125,400 |
| Great Britain | 225,000 |
One of the great economic purposes of railways in new countries is to reduce the cost of rapid transportation in bulk far below that of slow transportation in small quantities. Train speed is a matter of secondary importance in such cases, the traffic accommodation and capacity of the slowest train being far beyond that of road or canal transportation. Traffic will be served better and at much less cost by being carried in bulk on 500 miles of railway at 10 miles per hour, than on 100 miles of railway at 35 miles per hour, and then in small lots on wagons or canal boats at 3 miles per hour for 400 miles.