Rail made local transit reliable and westward expansion possible for business as well as for people. By 1856, the railroads extended west to the Mississippi River, and three years later they crossed the Missouri. On May 10, 1869 a golden spike marked the spanning of the nation by the first transcontinental railroad. All this was possible thank to the Irish immigrants and desperate, out-of-work Civil War veterans work in such harsh conditions. In 1888, when the first railroad statistics were published, the casualties totaled more than 2,000 employees killed and 20,000 injured. One problem was solved by a professor C. F. Dowd, he proposed that the earth's surface be divided into 24 time zones, one for each hour of the day. There were four time zones in the united states: the Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones. This helped people to keep track of time each time they were traveling by railroad.
Iron, coal, steel, lumber, and glass industries grew rapidly as they tried to keep pace with the railroads' demand for materials and parts. The rapid spread of railroad lines also fostered the growth of towns, helped established new markets, and offered rich opportunities for both visionaries and profiteers. Because of the linking in cities, big and small, many towns were known for their products and started selling to the whole country. George M. Pullman built a factory for manufacturing sleepers and other railroad cars on the Illinois prairie.
In September, 1825, the Stockton & Darlington Railroad Company began as the first railroad to carry both goods and passengers on regular schedules using locomotives designed by English inventor, George Stephenson. Stephenson's locomotive pulled six loaded coal cars and 21 passenger cars with 450 passengers over 9 miles in about one hour.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, considerable interest developed in the possibility of building tracked passenger vehicles that could travel much faster than conventional trains. From the 1970s, interest in an alternative high-speed technology centered on magnetic levitation. This vehicle rides on an air cushion created by electromagnetic reaction between an on-board device and another embedded in its guide way.
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