Railroad Network Quotes

Let us complete the grand design of Columbus, by putting Europe and Asia into communication, and that to our advantage, through the heart of our country. Let us give to his ships, converted into cars, a continuous course, unknown to all former times. Let us make the iron road, and make it from sea to sea.

In the United States three new methods of transportation made their appearance at almost the same time - the steamboat, the canal boat, and the rail car.

You can ride from England to China on regular lines of steamships and railroads without once passing from the protecting hollow of Mr. Morgan’s hand.

While no one railroad can completely duplicate another line, two or more may compete at particular points.

These bright roofs, these steep towers, these jewel-lakes, these skeins of railroad line - all spoke to her and she answered. She was glad they were there. She belonged to them and they to her. . . . She had not lost it. She was touching it with her fingertips. This was flying: to go swiftly over the earth you loved, touching it lightly with your fingertips, holding the railroads lines in your hand to guide you, like a skein of wool in a spider-web game - like following Ariadne's thread through the Minotaur's maze, Where would it lead, where?

This is a region [ Far East] with a substantially developed transport and railroad infrastructure. In recent years we have been actively developing road connection.

Railways, multiplied and spanning the continent, are essential domestic institutions -- more powerful and more permanent than law, or popular consent, or political constitutions... They thoroughly complete the grand system... which fraternizes us into one people.

Yet, in 1850 nearly all the railroads in the United States lay east of the Mississippi River, and all of them, even when they were physically mere extensions of one another, were separately owned and separately managed.

Obviously, if you look at the history of rail in the U.S., it took courageous entrepreneurs to have that vision of connecting the whole nation from east to west.