Page 246 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

railroad 1547

construction frenzy, and by 1907 Europe (excluding Rus- by 1880 all of its major cities were connected by rail.Var-
sia) was crisscrossed with 263,000 kilometers of track. ious European governments built lines in China, but con-
Germany alone possessed 58,000 kilometers, followed by struction proceeded at a snail’s pace until the Qing
France (47,900 kilometers), the Austro-Hungarian empire dynasty finally bowed to the inevitable and commis-
(41,800 kilometers), Great Britain and Ireland (37,300 sioned a U.S.-trained Chinese engineer, Zhan Tianyou, to
kilometers), Italy (16,600 kilometers), Spain (14,800 build the Beijing-to-Zhangjiakou line in 1905. By 1907,
kilometers), and Sweden (13,400 kilometers). Asia possessed a total of 77,110 kilometers of tracks, not
Railroads also played a major role in achieving the counting those portions of Asia under Russian control.
nation-building ambitions of the United States, the British India alone accounted for 48,230 kilometers, fol-
Dominion of Canada, and Czarist Russia.The first U.S. lowed by Japan (8,000 kilometers) and China (6,800
rail link, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, began oper- kilometers). During the same time period, Africa’s rail
ation in 1830, and for the next three decades construc- network grew to 29,800 kilometers, most of it concen-
tion occurred almost exclusively east of the Mississippi. trated in South Africa (11,300 kilometers) and Egypt
The discovery of gold in California in 1849, however, put (5,600 kilometers). Cecil Rhodes’s dream of a trans-
a premium on a fast and secure land route to the Pacific continental Cape-to-Cairo railroad, however, remained
Ocean. Generous subsidies from the U.S. government unfulfilled.
made it possible for the Union Pacific and Central Pacific In the Americas south of the U.S. border, national
companies to jointly finish a line between Sacramento authorities and international investors together provided
and Omaha in the years 1863 to 1869. Several other most of the impulse for the 80,500 kilometers of tracks
lines followed, including the Southern Pacific (1881), that were laid there between 1846 and 1907. Argentina
Northern Pacific (1883), and Great Northern (1893). developed the largest network (22,100 kilometers), fol-
Meanwhile, Canada completed the first true transconti- lowed by Mexico (21,900 kilometers of tracks) and
nental railroad, the Canadian Pacific, which linked the Brazil (17,300 kilometers). British entrepreneurs financed
eastern port of Montreal to the western port of Vancou- the most construction in Argentina and Brazil, while the
ver, in 1885. The Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Mexican government managed to finance many of its
Pacific followed in the early twentieth century. Last, the own tracks.
Russian government constructed the Trans-Siberian Rail-
way, linking Chelyabinsk and Vladivostok, between 1891 Technology, Organization,
and 1916. At 7,600 kilometers, it is still today the and Regulation
world’s longest railroad. By 1907, the United States had The success of the railroad depended on several key
laid a total of 382,100 kilometers of tracks (more than all inventions, chief among them the locomotive. Richard
of Europe combined), Canada 36,300 kilometers, and Trevithick demonstrated in 1804 that a steam engine
Russia 63,100 kilometers. could be used to propel railcars, but it was not until the
1820s that George and Robert Stephenson constructed
Colonial and the first modern locomotives, the “Locomotion” and
Foreign-Financed Railroads “Rocket,” for use on Britain’s rail lines. Other important
The Railroad Age coincided with the peak years of Euro- breakthroughs include the sleeping car, developed by
pean colonization and imperialism, and consequently George Pullman (U.S.) in 1857; pneumatic brakes,
most of Africa’s and Asia’s early railroads were built with invented by George Westinghouse (U.S.) in 1869; the
European capital and know-how.The British jump-started automatic car coupler, patented by Eli Janney (U.S.) in
India’s rail network in 1853, with the construction of a 1873; the electric locomotive, invented by Werner von
34-kilometer-long line between Bombay and Thana, and Siemens (Germany) in 1879; and steel rails and steel cars,