Quotes from Christian Wolmar

troublesome Southerners.

immutable laws of God Almighty

right-wing politicians

Indeed, the raid has been mythologized, inspiring several films, most notably in 1926 The General, in which, interestingly, Buster Keaton portrays the conductor, Fuller, as the hero, whereas the Unionists are depicted as ruthless train wreckers, demonstrating the enduring tacit sympathy to the Confederate cause.

himself: after the locomotive

it was still constrained by regulation

The act finally deregulated the rail industry, repealing the legislation that had created the Interstate Commerce Commission nearly a century previously.

the government moved swiftly to mandate that all trains should have "positive train control," an electronic signaling system that will automatically stop or slow down a train to prevent a crash if the engineer misses a red signal. Although the system may ultimately benefit the railroads marginally by making it possible to run extra trains, effectively they are being asked to pay several billion dollars

Interstate Commerce Commission

Southern towns had simply not welcomed the iron road with the same warm embrace as their northern counterparts.

The railroads complained that the truckers were effectively subsidized, as the roads they drove on were state funded and the lack of regulation—and initially unionization—allowed them to operate without restraint.

The growth of the railroads was intimately bound up with the wider development of America as a powerful economic force, and ultimately this process would ride roughshod over parochial concerns.

Railroads are a long-term business that play a crucial role in the areas they serve and therefore cannot be allowed to flourish or founder solely on the basis of unfettered market forces. Convincing American politicians of the strength of this argument would always be an uphill task.

Industries which have the bad fortune to deal directly with the public—especially where the public's total physical and mental welfare are one's responsibility for periods of from an hour to three or four days at a stretch—will always be fair game for public abuse.

The Pennsylvania Railroad's reaction to the plan is a good illustration of the wider attitude of the railroads. The Pennsy, as it was known, was the leading railroad of the age and saw itself as a cut above the others, a view encapsulated by its calling itself the "Standard Railway of the World.

The southern leaders perceived the transcontinental as the means of extending their plantation economy westward, replicating the same kind of small-town America characteristic of the antebellum South and, crucially, retaining the slave labor that was integral to their way of life: "The South saw land in a traditional light, as home and heritage, not as a natural resource to benefit capital and state.

Thanks to energetic lobbying by the vested interests of southern congressmen, legislation for the building of a transcontinental railroad was repeatedly blocked in Congress during the 1850s.