First railroads in North America

This is a list of the earliest railroads in North America, including various railroad-like precursors to the general modern form of a company or government agency operating locomotive-drawn trains on metal tracks.

While private railroads are legally free to choose their jobs and customers, common carriers must charge fair rates to all comers.

Any effort to arrange early common-carrier railroads in chronological order must choose among various possible criterion dates, including applying for a state charter, receiving a charter, forming a company to build a railroad, beginning construction, opening operations, and so forth.

Selected railroads chartered since 1832:

Before we can list railroads, we needs must understand what consisted a railway as an emerging technology. Understanding today's mature industry technology cannot suffice to see the past in its proper context clearly; to appreciate the explosive progress, one almost need join a track gang as a 'gandy dancer' and 'lay-hold heave' within a team replacing a cracked rail or two.

A skewed perspective can only be achieved were a party to only consider railroads famous for passenger traffic as of importance. By and large, for operations management, carriage of passengers was by far, most often, a minor concern relative to the planning for actual business revenues of a railway creating profits for owners. Nearly every business depended on large multiples that return a modest regular return rather than a competitive edge such a monopoly situation.

Only by understanding that there was the influence of the press on the writing of history, and the widely held snobbery-induced belief that the keeping of such well traveled managers experiences happy-faced with the brand's passenger system would strongly influence his purchasing and decision making — resulting thus also in his scheduling of his company's freight on the freight carrier side together with wide-ranging campaigns that promoted passenger services onto a pedestal can we counteract the false romantic influences of decades of railway advertising campaigns. Early passenger accommodations were spartan, and then only slowly improved as most lines were de facto monopolies locally and could do whatever riders would put up with. Accordingly, general passenger services only slowly became uniform, what we'd consider to be coach class, and the great famous runs of named passenger expresses were comfortably in the future as railroads entered their middle years. Such catering to luxury travelers would occur, but only in response to feeling a competitive pinch, or to assert one. They did not rule on most trunk, much less branch lines, nor for normal inter-city travelers, but were marketed and aimed at the well to do. No doubt the luxury traveler paid his own way, but they also demanded vast increases in additional train crew and station staff to act as cooks, cleaners, bartenders, stewards, janitors, porters, not to mention expensive car maintenance costs, and the need for mail room staff to walk and feed pets.

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