Trains and railroads dramatically changed life in America. They allowed for faster, safer travel all over the country. They were more reliable than wagon trains, as these trains could bog down in the country’s terribly maintained roads. Railroads allowed people to send goods independently of rivers and canals.

The federal government gave railroad companies thousands of acres of land on which to run their tracks. They wielded political power, too, by demanding the federal government send troops in to break up railroad strikes in 1877 and 1894.

Eventually, railways lowered the cost of transporting many kinds of goods across great distances. These advances in transport helped drive settlement in the western regions of North America. They were also essential to the nation’s industrialization. The resulting growth in productivity was astonishing.

The simple presence of railroads could bring a city economic prosperity. Railroads even helped shape the physical growth of cities and towns, as steam railroads and then electric street railways facilitated growth along their lines and made suburban living feasible.

Within ten years of its completion, the railroad shipped $50 million worth of freight coast to coast every year. Just as it opened the markets of the west coast and Asia to the east, it brought products of eastern industry to the growing populace beyond the Mississippi.

The transcontinental railroad transformed the American economy. The railroad rapidly shipped resources such as coal, timber, precious metals and even cattle from west to east and opened up new markets for the goods produced in eastern factories.

In the end, the Transcontinental Railroad impacted the U.S. economy by transporting products and people, leading into the economic growth. The United States manufactured 30% of the worlds goods by the 1900. With these towns and cities being made, they had to buy more things which leads to economic growth.

Jay Gould

It supplied the railroad with labor in the form of freed African Americans. It freed the government to give more money to the Union Pacific line. It encouraged more people to travel the railroad to settle in the West. …

Thomas C. Durant, a medical doctor turned businessman, gained control of the Union Pacific Railroad Company by buying over $2 million in shares and installing his own man as president.

The Union Pacific Railroad (reporting marks UP, UPP, UPY), legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over 32,200 miles (51,800 km) routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans….Union Pacific Railroad.