when did the railroad start in america?

Question

what year did the railroad / train start in america

Answer 1

The first use of cast iron rail in the US is documented to be in the 1790s in the New England area using horse drawn cars.

The first steam engine ran in the US about 1825/1826 by John Stevens in Hoboken NJ.

The first "railroad" system was the Baltimore and Ohio and is said to have been chartered in 1827 and first carried passengers in 1830.

Answer 2

Colonel John Stevens is considered to be the father of American railroads. In 1826 Stevens demonstrated the feasibility of steam locomotion on a circular experimental track constructed on his estate in Hoboken, New Jersey, three years before George Stephenson perfected a practical steam locomotive in England. The first railroad charter in North America was granted to John Stevens in 1815. Grants to others followed, and work soon began on the first operational railroad

Designed and built by Peter Cooper in 1830, the Tom Thumb was the first American-built steam locomotive to be operated on a common-carrier railroad.

Answer 3

"The First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States was built across North America in the 1860s, linking the railway network of the Eastern United States with California on the Pacific coast. Ceremonially completed on May 10, 1869, at the famous "golden spike" event at Promontory Summit, Utah, it created a nation-wide mechanized transportation network that revolutionized the population and economy of the American West. This network caused the wagon trains of previous decades to become obsolete, exchanging it for a modern transportation system.

Authorized by the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 and heavily backed by the federal government, it was the culmination of a decades-long movement to build such a line and was one of the crowning achievements of the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, completed four years after his death. The building of the railway required enormous feats of engineering and labor in the crossing of plains and high mountains by the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad, the two privately chartered federally backed enterprises that built the line westward and eastward respectively.

The building of the railroad was motivated in part to bind the Union together during the strife of the American Civil War. It substantially accelerated the populating of the West by white homesteaders, while contributing to the decline of the Native Americans in these regions. In 1879, the Supreme Court of the United States formally established, in its decision regarding Union Pacific Railroad vs. United States (99 U.S. 402), the official "date of completion" of the Transcontinental Railroad as November 6, 1869.

The Central Pacific and the Southern Pacific Railroad combined operations in 1870 and formally merged in 1885. Union Pacific originally bought the Southern Pacific in 1901 but in 1913 was forced to divest it; the company once again acquired the Southern Pacific in 1996. Much of the original right-of-way is still in use today and owned by the Union Pacific.

The railroad was considered the greatest technological feat of the 19th century. It served as a vital link for trade, commerce and travel that joined the eastern and western halves of late 19th century United States. The transcontinental railroad quickly ended the romantic yet far slower and more hazardous Pony Express and stagecoach lines that had preceded it. The subsequent march of "Manifest Destiny" and proliferation of the so-called "Iron Horse" across Native American land greatly accelerated the demise of Great Plains Indian culture."

(This is taken from the following website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad)
Hope it helps

Answer 4

The first transcontinental railroad began in 1869, but smaller lines began a good thirty years before.

Answer 5

early 1800s

Answer 6

wild west and indian territory