By having coast-to-coast rail service, it was possible to cross the country in a matter of days instead of weeks.
The Underground Railroad?
Ulysses Grant was the US president when the transcontinental railroad was finished in 1869.
The US railroad was built as a way to transport goods and people across the country from east to west.
35,000 miles of railroad.
northern pacific railroad-szabo
What drove the base of railroad construction in the United States
There were 30,626 miles of railroad in 1860 according to Wikipedia.
There was almost 3,00 miles of railroad tracks in 1840.
The first U.S. railroad line opened and ran in 1830 in Baltimore, Maryland.
The biggest railroad currently is the UP (Union Pacific). Next in line would be BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe), then NS (Norfolk Southern) and finally CSX. The biggest railroad in US history is most likely Penn Central (because the biggest railroad before, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the New York Central Railroad merged and made one large railroad).
By the 1880's, the US railroad network contained nearly one third of the world's railroad mileage.
The first railroad to connect the east and west coasts of the US was the First Transcontinental Railroad, completed in 1869. The project linked the Central Pacific Railroad from the west and the Union Pacific Railroad from the east at Promontory Summit, Utah.