Railroads in the Civil War

Railroads helped win the civil war for the North. Railroads were the North’s best weapon. Railroads helped move freight across the country during the civil war also including passengers, builders, engineers, troops, and cargo. The railroads worked together to move freight across vast distances, they found out the best uses of the locomotives, and uses for the tracks, which resulted as the overall best weapon for the North.

Before the Civil War, there were 200 different railroads across America. About two thirds of those 200 belonged to the North and one third of them belonged to the South. During the war there were about 35,000 miles of track, about 25,000 miles of that belonged to the North and about 10,000 miles of track to belonged to the South. The tracks in the North were mainly split between three states: Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Locomotives had numbers on the side of them to tell that it was the “number” made.

Locomotives had wheel configurations like 4-4-0 and 2-6-0. 4-4-0 is the ‘American standard’, it means four wheels in front, and four wheels that give power to the train. 2-6-0 means two leading wheels, and six wheels that give power to the train, this is a ‘New Jersey style’.4-6-0 was considered the passenger standard.2-8-2 called Mikado.4-6-2, called the Pacific locomotive.4-8-4 called the Northern Locomotive. There are even big 4-6-6-4 called the Challenger for good reason. There are also 2-8-8-4, the 4-6-4 , the massive 2-8-8-2,and the 0-4-0.keep in mind that these weigh tens of tons and were hard to get started and stop. The B & O railroad was a major railroad line.

Different track gauges meant that transfers had to be made between trains on different gauge tracks, which meant more trains had to be used. Gauge means the length from one side of the rail to the other rail. The standard gauge was 4 feet and 8.5 inches. Railroad cars could not change their wheel gauge, so they could not change to other gauge tracks. Some big trains could not go on bridges and tight turns, so they had to create different routes for them.

This was a problem that needed to be fixed. It was about $4.50 per pound to transport cotton from Buffalo to Boston, but half of the coaches, baggage, and mail cars were often out of commission due to repairs. This was a huge problem for all the railroads.