Railroads & Train Technology

Trains made their appearance in the early 1800s, as simple cars or carts on guided rails pulled by mules or horses, usually in the service of coal mines. The basic technology of flanged wheels on metal rails still prevails today; the engines are bigger and more powerful and the freight cars can be highly customized for their cargo, but trains still run on a pair of parallel rails that need to be laid as level and straight as possible. At first, trains were considered for freight only, but passenger service soon became the face of the burgeoning industry. By the Civil War, trains were not only indispensable, they were becoming the leading method for transporting freight and people. Railroads spelled the end of canals and stagecoaches. During the war, the railroads became an integral component of strategy on both sides, though the North had the advantage of more railroad miles, more cars available for troops and supplies, and a deeper pool of experienced trainmen to operate the lines. Military use of the railroads during the American Civil War represents some of the earliest uses of railroads in this manner.

As demand on the railroads increased, the technology evolved, though slowly. For instance, the old and dangerous link and pin couplers finally gave way in the 1870s to Miller’s combination platform, draft gear and coupler design, saving many a railway man his fingers (and even hands and lives) and decreasing the occurrences of telescoping cars during a wreck. The old handset brakes also, eventually, disappeared. Within eight years of his first patent in 1868, Westinghouse’s air brakes replaced the daredevil brakeman running across the tops of passenger cars setting the hand brakes. As with the link and pin couplers, however, air brakes on freight cars took much longer and the passage of the Safety Appliance Act (1893) to become standard on freight trains.

Patents for new technology were continually being forwarded for consideration, but the railroad industry did not like making quick decisions. The only thing fast in the industry was the ever-increasing speeds of its trains. When passenger trains first rolled on the tracks, there was concern that the human body could not take such horrific speeds as 20 or 30 miles per hour. Journalists accompanied inaugural excursion trains and wrote articles as they rode, proving travel at such speeds did not harm the human mind or body. Freight trains were notoriously slow, being much longer and heavier and needing more time and room for stopping. As passenger trains began running at 30, 40, and even 50 miles an hour, freight trains still trundled along at a sedate 12 mph.