Practically no railroad, even as late as the sixties, was wider than another. They were all single-tracked lines.

To this end, the Pennsylvania Railroad was incorporated on April 13, 1846, with a franchise permitting the construction of a railroad across the State from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh.

The railroad originally was as completely dissociated from steam propulsion as was the ship.

The public conviction that a railroad linking the West and the East was an absolute necessity became so pronounced after the gold discoveries of '49 that Congress passed an act in 1853 providing for a survey of several lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

When the scheme for the construction of a railroad from Baltimore to the waters of the Ohio River first began to take form, the United States had barely emerged from the Revolutionary period.

The history of the Erie Railroad ever since 1901 has been a record of progress.