Pricing, speed, comfort, convenience—mobility around the new networks of railroad, telegraph, and steamships sustained travel and tourism that transformed local spaces into imagined locations.
N.D. | Time Table
The Atlantic & Great Western Railroad stressed its safety record and comfortable, elegant, luxurious cars. The time table quotes former Illinois Congressman Elihu B. Washburn on the road's smooth ride and "clean, light, and airy" setting. The road also boasted that its passengers traveling in its beautifully appointed Pullman cars would "not have to leave the train between Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis."
August 15, 1850 | Time Table
This timetable, which took effect August 15, 1850, shows the departure and arrival times of trains on the Boston and Worcester Railroad.
May 5, 1851 | Time Table
This timetable, which took effect May 5, 1851, shows the summer schedule for trains leaving Boston on the Boston & Maine Railroad.
November 1, 1853 | Time Table
This timetable, which took effect November 1, 1853, shows arrival and departure times on the Boston and Worcester Railroad.
January 8, 1855 | Time Table
This Illinois Central Railroad time table, in effect starting January 8, 1855, notes the arrival and departure schedules for freight and passenger trains between Galena and Cairo, Illinois.
March 1, 1857 | Rate Tables
This March 1, 1857 rate table for the North Western Virginia Railroad shows the distance between stations, lists the entire distance of the line, and gives passenger rates to and from various stations.
September 10, 1859 | Illustration
This image from the September 10, 1859 issue of Harper's Weekly depicts a portion of the Illinois Central railroad depot at Chicago, Illinois.
March 3, 1860 | Illustration
This image from the March 3, 1860 issue of Harper's Weekly depicts soldiers from the New York state militia on their way to Washington, D.C. to attend the inauguration of a statue of George Washingon.
October 20, 1862 | Rate Tables
This Baltimore and Ohio Railroad passenger rate table, which took effect October 20, 1862, includes a note from E. W. Barker which states that, "This Tariff was in force from the 20th Oct. 1862 to 1st Jany. 1863."
December 8, 1862 | Time Table
This timetable, which took effect December 8, 1862, shows arrival and departure times on the Boston and Worcester Railroad.
May 9, 1864 | Time Table
This timetable, which took effect on May 9, 1864, shows arrival and departure times on the Boston and Worcester Railroad.
October 31, 1864 | Time Table
This timetable, which took effect October 31, 1864, shows departure times and fares on the Brookline Branch Railroad. It also features a complete schedule for "Newton Special Trains."
May 31, 1867 | Letter
In this letter from May 31, 1867, George L. Dunlap, General Superintendent of the Chicago & North Western Railway, writes to Jennie Reed, wife of Samuel Reed, informing her that he has granted and enclosed a railway pass for her per her request.
December 14, 1867 | Illustration
This image from the December 14, 1867 issue of Harper's Weekly depicts men shooting buffalo for sport from Kansas Pacific Railroad cars.
May 30, 1868 | Illustration
This image from the May 30, 1868 issue of Harper's Weekly depicts the railroad and railway station at Aspinwall, New Granada (present day Colon, Panama) in Central America.
May 29, 1869 | Illustration
This image from the May 29, 1869 issue of Harper's Weekly depicts wealthy train passengers being served in a palace hotel car on the Pacific Railroad.
November 9, 1872 | Illustration
This image from the November 9, 1872 issue of Harper's Weekly depicts a workmen's train in the subway of London, England as a part of a fictional story entitled London: A Pilgrimage by Gustave Doré and Blanchard Jerrold.
December 21, 1872 | Illustration
This image from the December 21, 1872 issue of Harper's Weekly depicts five people seated in a passenger car.
May 29, 1875 | Illustration
This scene from the May 29, 1875 issue of Harper's Weekly depicts a hunting party shooting pronghorn antelope from a railroad train in Colorado.
February 23, 1880 | Letter
In the first part of her February 23, 1880 letter to Frank, Genie Hathaway rapturously describes the luxuries of riding in a Pullman car on the way to Chicago. She mentions several of her fellow passengers, one of whom is female world traveler. The second part of her letter describes the vulgarity of the passengers traveling with her in a "common car". Part of the letter is damaged.
1880 | Time Table
The Baltimore and Ohio was one of the oldest railroads in the nation and the first to break through the Allegheny Mountains to reach the Ohio River in 1857. In its 1880 time table the railroad stressed the natural features and wonders along its route and its picturesque sites. The road also used a massive map of the nation to expose its western connections.
1881 | Book
An excerpt from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
September 1, 1881 | Time Table
The Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway's 1881 time table featured linkages to "leading business centers" and "summer resorts of the Great North-West."
August 1, 1884 | Time Table
The Chicago and Northwestern Railway's 1884 time table listed detailed times and maps for its extensive regional system.
1885 | Time Table
The Chesapeake and Ohio's 1885 time table featured excursion rates to "Old Point Comfort" on the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. Pitched to male travelers, the brochure described "nymph-like bathers" at the resort hotel and "the merry laugh of some bewitching beauty." Travelers could also take steamship to Barbados, Rio de Janiero, or Para, Brazil, at "the mouth of the Amazon." The brochure also emphasized the picturesque scences of the Alleghenies and Virginia, where Civil War battlefields could be toured. "The battle of the Seven Pines was fought near where the railway runs," the brochure explained, "and McClellan's peninsular campaign has made this entire section of Virginia interesting."
March 1, 1885 | Time Table
The Boston & Albany's 1885 time table emphasized its connection with the New York Central and its modern safety, as the "only double track route from New England to the West."
1885 | Time Table
The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe's 1885 time table emphasized its connections not only to California but also to Mexico City on the Mexico Central Railroad. Its large map featured detailed insets of Baja California and Mexico for tourists and travelers, and its inside folds described special rates for "land explorers" and emigrants.
1886 | Time Table
The Chicago and Atlantic Railway's 1886 time table emphasized its "straight line" to the East and the "smoothness and evenness" of its grade. The road used "the best of steel rails only" and boasted "three thousand oak ties to the mile."
1886 | Time Table
The Chicago and Alton time table stressed the regional, midwestern connections for St. Louis and Kansas City.
1887 | Time Table
The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad's 1887 time table featured the speed of its route from St. Louis, Kansas City, or Chicago to Los Angeles. The time table emphasized express trains and fewer changes of cars than competing lines.
December 10, 1888 | Time Table
The 1888 Chicago and North-Western Railway emphasized "cheap farms and free homes" in Northern Nebraska along the Elkhorn Valley, the Niobrara Valley, and into the Black Hills in South Dakota. The time table included detailed descriptions of homestead policies and land availability for immigrants and settlers.
February 7, 1891 | Time Table
August 20, 1891 | Time Table
The Chicago, Burlington & Northern's 1891 time table adopted a compass-like circular image representing the major points accessible on the line. This table also featured the history of the line and the picturesque sites along its route.
1892 | Time Table
This 1892 Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe time table featured detailed insets with maps of its subsidiary lines.
1893 | Time Table
The Chicago Great Western Railway's 1893 time table placed its line in the center of a globe-like image. The road stressed its comfortable "compartmented sleeping cars."
1898 | Map
This map from the 1898 Statistical Atlas of the United States depicts the entire United States railroad system in 1890. The accompanying table charts the increase in railroad mileage from 1830 to 1890.
1900 | Book
An excerpt from Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie.
1907 | Book
An excerpt from Jack London's The Road.
March 1, 1907 | Time Table
By 1907 railroads were producing elaborate time tables with detailed connecting information, rates, and times. The Santa Fe Railroad emphasized detailed times and schedules for this large system.
1911 | Photograph
This image from The Modern Railroad (1911) captures a white, female passenger receiving a manicure from an African-American woman while aboard the railroad.
1911 | Photograph
This image from The Modern Railroad, published in 1911, shows one of the earliest locomotives built for the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad.
1911 | Photograph
This image from The Modern Railroad(1911), shows the first engine of the James J. Hill system sitting next to one of the Great Northern Railroad's more recent models.
1911 | Photograph
This image from The Modern Railroad (1911) captures the interior of an elegant dining car, including several of its male and female passengers.
1911 | Photograph
This image from Edward Hungerford's The Modern Railroad (1911) features the "John Bull," a historic locomotive of the Cambden and Amboy railroad.
1911 | Photograph
This image from The Modern Railroad (1911), showcases "the biggest locomotive in the world," a huge engine built by the Santa Fe Railroad in its Topeka, Kansas shops.
September 15, 1912 | Time Table
The Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound Railway in 1912 stressed the opportunities in the Northwestern United States. This "new land" would allow the farmer to "pay for his land in two crops" and the "investor" to "make large and quick profits."
1918 | Book
An excerpt from Willa Cather's My Ántonia.
1925 | Map
These two maps from the 1925 Statistical Atlas of the United States offer regional and national geographical representations of the changing centers of population in the United States from 1790 to 1920.
March 4, 1928 | Time Table
The Chicago and Northwestern Railway's 1928 time table emphasized planning "your summer vacation" to Yellowstone, Rocky Mountain, Zion, Grand Canyon, Bryce, Yosemite, and Ranier National Parks, as well as other western mountain sites.
1932 | Map
This map from the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States offers a geographic rendering of the United States' center of population from 1790 to 1930. It references six organizational categories, including total population, urban population, rural population, foreign-born population, and Negro population.
1932 | Map
This map from the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States reveals the United States land grants available for the construction of railroads and wagon roads between 1823-1871. As the key indicates, dark lines represent the limits of the land grants, while white and striped areas differentiate between unforfeited and forfeited Federal land grants for railroads.
1932 | Map
This series of maps from the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States shows the progressive decrease in travel time by depicting the time required to travel from New York to various western locations in 1800, 1830, 1857, AND 1930.
1932 | Map
These two maps from the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States display overland mail routes and railroad lines in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. The maps show the extent of railroads in 1850 and 1860 and overland mail from 1850 to 1869.
1932 | Map
This map from the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States depicts the various railroad lines operating in the United States in 1840.
1932 | Map
This map from the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States displays the Harriman Railroad System in 1914, including the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, and Los Angeles, San Pedro, and Salt Lake railroads.
1932 | Map
This map from the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States depicts the New England railroad system in 1914, including the New York, New Haven, and Hartford, the Boston and Maine, and the Maine Central railroads.
1932 | Map
This map from the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States displays the extent of the New York Central railroad system in 1914.
1932 | Map
This map from the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States displays the extent of the Pennsylvania railroad system in 1914.
1932 | Map
This map from the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States displays the extent of the Southern railroad system in 1913.
1932 | Map
This map from the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States displays the United States' railroad lines in 1870 as well as some of the major cities they connected.
1932 | Map
These two maps from the 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States depict the extent of western railroads in 1880 and 1930. They illustrate the tremendous growth of the railroad in the western United States during this fifty-year period.
In the first several decades of railroad development, companies expected to earn revenue primarily from passenger traffic rather than freight. Many roads were built to create new opportunities for communication and travel between communities.
Nineteenth-century Americans often noted that steam powered railroads "annihilated space and time." Railroad expansion reshaped their distances and spatial relationships.
Railroad growth exploded in the 1850s and again after the Civil War. The view focuses on the network expansion at the local and regional levels.
© 2006–2008 All Rights Reserved. William G. Thomas, III | Comments?
