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Railroads affecting chicago
American railroad industrialization
American railroad industrialization
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Railway In Chicago The rail systems put into place in Chicago have always been a major factor in freight transportation. The city provides a centralized hub for the railways throughout the country. After a long run the system is bound to find flaws as old technologies are passed by new ones. The existing railroad structures have in time taken a toll over the years of service. “The railroad system of Chicago has been around for a long time now. After many years it has gone past time time of despair. With the new project it is hoping to bring the popularity back to where it once was” (Chicago Transit Renovation to Improve Service). This update needed will guide Chicagos railroad system into the future. The city also has to take a look on how it is going to keep up with the constant increase of railcars on their tracks. With the new technologies of the future Chicago can only make their infrastructure better. The aim is to stay on time with the railcars to diminish the amount of overcrowding presented in the old rail systems in Chicago. Chicago Railway History Rail in Chicago is essential to Railroads throughout the country of North America. Chicago is also the known for it’s center in the railways throughout America. In comparison to any other city in the country, Chicago offers more railroad tracks to the surrounding states. “Chicago today remains the busiest rail hub in the United States. Each day, nearly 1,300 trains pass through the region (500 freight and 760 passenger). Chicago handles one-fourth of the nation's freight rail traffic, each day handling 37,500 railcars” (About CREATE). Being the center for American freight Chicago also is known for it railyards. The railyards are gateways to the other rail tracks. It is home t... ... middle of paper ... ...number of people depending on the movement of goods and transportation is always going to be a large portion of the population. “ This is perhaps the most important force in shifting from the old paradigm. Because customers want products when, where, and how they choose, distribution is increasingly a vital component of the supply chain” (Kirchhoff M, Peacock J. 2005). Expanding the clearing yards to a larger number of rails should begin to decrease the amount of congestion the city is witnessing with their freight traffic. Even the problems are being stressed amongst the citizens of the state. The arrival times are unpredictable and are breaking down all the time. Being old like the rest of the rail infrastructure it needs to be repaired as well. “About $8.7 billion is needed to bring it up to "good repair" but no funding plan is in place” (Van Hampton, T. 2007).
Cannons boomed simultaneously in New York and San Francisco at the same moment the golden spike was hammered into the ground, connecting the Central Pacific Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad companies at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869 (American 1). North America became the first continent to be connected by railroad from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast when the Transcontinental Railroad was finished (Gale 1). The railroad was an essential component of achieving manifest destiny. The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad spurred settlement in the American West, encouraged immigration, and began an economic boom in the United States.
In Henry George’s article, What the Railroad Will Bring Us, it discusses the main social, political, and economic transformations that the trans-continental railroad would bring to the state of California. More importantly, he discusses not only the benefits, but also discusses the major drawbacks with the arrival of the railroad. Henry George stated the railroad would be the “greatest work of the age” (297). With a railroad stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, multiple benefits would be brought to the state of California. First, the railroad will not only create a new means of transportation across the United States, it additionally would also become “one of the greatest material prosperity” of its time (298). This means more people, more houses,
There is one reason Chicago is as big as it is today and that is the fact that it is the largest rail city in the world. The railroad made Chicago what it is today, and although the canal was very important in the history of Chicago the railroads importance out weighs it by far. The canal was important because it was the vision of the first settlers of Chicago to have an all water trade route that would go through Chicago. What those first explorers saw was a way to make a canal so that they could transport goods from the St Lawrence River all the way to the Gulf of Mexico with less cost and with more efficiency. The canal was the reason Chicago was settled in the first place if not for it there might very well not be a city called Chicago. You could argue that the canal was the most important thing in Chicago's history but I think the railroads were much more important. The railroads enabled Chicago to become one of the biggest cities in the world by bringing in different business and all types of goods. Chicago is a very key location to have a railroad-shipping hub. This is because it is centrally located in the United States so goods can be shipped in almost any direction and received in a shorter amount of time. William Butler Ogden was the one who pushed for Chicago to adopt a large rail system and he should be known as the one who made this city boom. St. Louis or another centrally located city could have very well adopted the rail system and they would have reaped all the benefits.
Taylor, George Rogers, and Irene D. Neu. The American Railroad Network, 1861-1890. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1956. Print.
In order to detail the rise of railroads throughout this era of technological boom, it is important to understand the Industrial Revolution, which was the start of this success; it paved the way for major changes in the modern society we live in today. This is the period between the 18th and 19th centuries when major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportatio...
During the 1800’s, America was going through a time of invention and discovery known as the Industrial Revolution. America was in its first century of being an independent nation and was beginning to make the transition from a “home producing” nation to a technological one. The biggest contribution to this major technological advancement was the establishment of the Transcontinental Railroad because it provided a faster way to transport goods, which ultimately boosted the economy and catapulted America to the Super Power it is today.
This essay will encounter The Long Island Rail Road first years making. The rail road was developed because the rail roads planners wanted to expand a way to get to Boston. In order for this view to happen, the service needed to make rail-road through Long Island, so they made the LIRR with the help of legislature supplying the money with 1,500,000$. This caused for New York or Brooklyn to be linked to Boston. Even though the money was good start for making the rail road, it was still very difficult to make so they to find ways to make it more efficient.
The Web. 18 March 2014. “The Impact of the Transcontinental Railroad.” WGBH America. WGBH America, n.d. -.
Throughout the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, the United States economy changed dramatically as the country transformed from a rural agricultural nation to an urban industrial gian, becoming the leading manufacturing country in the world. The vast expansion of the railroads in the late 1800s’ changed the early American economy by tying the country together into one national market. The railroads provided tremendous economic growth because it provided a massive market for transporting goods such as steel, lumber, and oil. Although the first railroads were extremely successful, the attempt to finance new railroads originally failed. Perhaps the greatest physical feat late 19th century America was the creation of the transcontinental railroad. The Central Pacific Company, starting in San Francisco, and the new competitor, Union Pacific, starting in Omaha. The two companies slaved away crossing mountains, digging tunnels, and laying track the entire way. Both railroads met at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869, and drove one last golden spike into the completed railway. Of course the expansion of railroads wasn’t the only change being made. Another change in the economy was immigration.
In 1900, 4000 miles of railroads crossed over North Carolina in many directions (Trelease 32). The expansion of the railroad system did so much for Nort...
Seavoy, Ronald E. "Railroads." An Economic History of the United States: From 1607 to the Present. New York: Routledge, 2006. 188-200. Print.
railway goes. Next, a roadbed must be build to flatten out the ground and ensuring the
The Underground Railroad despite occurring centuries ago continues to be an “enduring and popular thread in the fabric of America’s national historical memory” as Bright puts it. Throughout history, thousands of slaves managed to escape the clutches of slavery by using a system meant to liberate. In Colson Whitehead’s novel, The Underground Railroad, he manages to blend slave narrative and history creating a book that goes beyond literary or historical fiction. Whitehead based his book off a question, “what if the Underground Railroad was a real railroad?” The story follows two runaway slaves, Cora and Caesar, who are pursued by the relentless slave catcher Ridgeway. Their journey on the railroad takes them to new and unfamiliar locations,
had resulted the consequences of the infrastructure as trains speed have been slowed and this
The development of urban transportation has not changed with the cities; cities have changed with transportation. This chapter offers an insight into the Past and the future of Urban transportation and is split up into a number of different sections. It includes a timeline of the different forms of transport innovations, starting from the earliest stages of urban transport, dating back to the omnibus (the first type of urban transportation) and working in a chronological order until eventually reaching the automobile. However, these changes in Urban transport did not happen for no reason. Different factors within society meant urban transport needed to evolve; points will be made on why society needed this evolution. In contrast I will observe the problems urban transport has caused in society as a result of its rapid progression. Taking account of both arguments for the evolution of urban transport, I will look at where it will go in the future.