Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 241, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 October 1915 — RAPID GROWTH OF RAILROAD [ARTICLE]

RAPID GROWTH OF RAILROAD

First Locomotive Pulled Load of Freight Hundred Years Ago— Fastest Trip Ever Madet One hundred years ago the first steam locomotive hauled a load of freight over rails in England. On the same day the New York newspapers told of a test, after that century, conducted at Binghamton, N. Y., when an engine pulled 250 loaded cars, weighing 21,000 tons. It was only last November, the 25th, to be exact, when a special train, consisting of a locomotive and two cars, ran from Washington to Jersey City, 226 miles, in four hours, the fastest trip ever made between the two cities. From a little more than nine thousand miles of railroad tracks in America in 1850, thirty years later the mileage had grown to more than ninety-three thousand. Twenty years after that it had more than doubled the 1880 figures. In the United States today there are more than two hundred and fifty thousand miles of track, the total mileage being greater than that of all Europe and Asia combined, with Australia thrown in. One of New York’s terminals alone covers in acres almost double the area of London’s Waterloo, Paris’ 8L Laaare, Frankfort’s and Dresden’s Main and the Cologne stations.