Railroads In The 1870s: Panic, Strike, Mileage, Steel & Air Brakes

Last revised: September 6, 2026

The 1870s are the decade American railroads almost doubled their mileage, then ran into a crash, a scandal, a farmers’ revolt, a bridge that fell, and a strike that shut the East. John Stover’s atlas series, the same figures used on the history hub, put 52,922 miles in operation in 1870 and about 93,200 by 1880. That is the biggest ten-year jump the country had seen. It is not a Western-only story. The hardware that made a long train stoppable—Westinghouse’s automatic air brake—was adopted at this time.

The 1860s left an unfinished list: mixed gauges, link-and-pin, hand brakes, a Pacific railroad still two companies, a South putting track back. This page is what happened next. The history of Promontory can be on the transcontinental page. The July 1877 walkout is the Great Railroad Strike. Three-foot fever is narrow gauge. Standard Time on the clocks is November 18, 1883—the 1880s.

1875 lithograph of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Fast Mail led by 4-4-0 number 317

“The Fast Mail” (1875). Lithograph published by J. A. Burch, printed by Clay, Cosack & Co., Buffalo, showing Lake Shore & Michigan Southern 4-4-0 No. 317 and Railway Post Office cars. Not a Currier & Ives sheet. American-Rails.com collection.

On this page: At a glance · Mileage · 1871–73: grants, Crédit Mobilier, Cooke · Steel, air brake, coupler · Trunks to Chicago · The West, without finishing it · Granger laws · Ashtabula · 1877 · Time (not yet Standard Time) · Gauge and three-foot fever · By 1880

At a glance

Item	Detail
Miles in operation, 1870	52,922 (Stover)
Miles in operation, 1880	About 93,200 (Stover). Period tables also print 93,267
Miles added, 1870–80	On the order of 40,000 (live table 40,345). Stover’s regional percentages: Mid-Atlantic ~42%, South ~55%, Old Northwest ~70%, West ~151%
Land grants stop	Last major checkerboard grants March 3, 1871 (Texas & Pacific / Southern Pacific branches). Rights of way continued; subsidy acres did not
Crédit Mobilier	Exposed 1872; Congress 1872–73. UP construction profits, not a 1869 spike story. See transcontinental
Panic of 1873	Jay Cooke & Co. failed September 18, 1873. Northern Pacific construction stalled; the railroad did not “fail” that day. NP finished September 8, 1883
Westinghouse automatic brake	Patents March 5, 1872 (Nos. 124,404 / 124,405). Straight-air patent is April 13, 1869. Passenger adoption this decade; freight later. See air brake
Janney coupler	Patent 1868. Still not a national standard. Master Car Builders 1887; Safety Appliance Act 1893
B&O to Chicago	Baltimore, Pittsburgh & Chicago / B&O Chicago line open November 1874 (some summaries print 1875). Pittsburgh through-route is later. See B&O
Fast Mail	NYC + Lake Shore, New York–Chicago, first trip September 16, 1875. Congress cut the original service July 1876
Ashtabula	Lake Shore bridge, December 29, 1876. See Ashtabula
Munn v. Illinois	U.S. Supreme Court, March 1, 1877. State regulation of businesses “affected with a public interest.” Interstate rates are Wabash (1886) and the ICC (1887)
Great Railroad Strike	July 1877, beginning on the B&O at Martinsburg. Encyclopedia: 1877
Vanderbilt	Died January 4, 1877. Lake Shore is the Chicago end of the Water Level Route. See New York Central
Denver & Rio Grande	Chartered October 27, 1870, 3-foot. Encyclopedia: narrow gauge / D&RGW
Standard Time	Charles F. Dowd pamphlet 1870. Railroad clocks change November 18, 1883. Not this decade’s closer

Mileage is the Stover / Poor series used on the history hub, not later ICC first-track owned. Construction was not even: 1871–73 ran hot, then 1873 froze capital. Information compiled September 6, 2026.

Fifty-three thousand miles, then ninety-three

The 1860s closed at 52,922 miles with a continuous iron line from the Missouri to the Pacific and four eastern trunks already pointing at Chicago. The 1870s add about 40,000 more. Stover’s regional split is the one worth keeping: the West more than doubled (about 151 percent), the Old Northwest about 70 percent, the South about 55 percent as it rebuilt, the Mid-Atlantic a still-large 42 percent on a bigger base. By 1880 he could write that every state, and the territories that later became states, had at least some track. That is a coverage claim, not a claim that Montana or Arizona looked like Pennsylvania.

The live glance table listed six gauges in 1870, which is the right idea. Standard 4 feet 8½ inches dominated the Northeast and Midwest. Five-foot track was still ordinary in the Deep South. Erie was still six feet. Ohio’s old 4-foot-10 remnants and the Pennsylvania’s 4-foot-9 practice still showed on maps. Erie’s conversion is 1880. The Southern 5-foot changeover is May 31–June 1, 1886.

1876 United States railroad map from the 1877 Official Guide east of Colorado

United States railroad map, 1876, as printed in the 1877 Official Guide, covering the network east of Colorado. American-Rails.com collection.

Look at that 1876 sheet. The East is a web. Chicago is already a hub. The first Pacific line is a thin stem. Colorado and the Southwest are still being argued in three-foot and standard. The 1880s will thicken the West. This decade is the jump that made the 1880s possible, interrupted by 1873.

Grants end, Crédit Mobilier, Jay Cooke

Congress stopped giving railroads checkerboard public land in 1871. The last large transcontinental-style grants, March 3 that year, went to the Texas & Pacific and related Southern Pacific branches. Rights of way through the public domain continued. Subsidy acres did not. The 1850 Illinois Central grant had opened the machine; twenty-one years later the machine was politically dead. Forfeiture fights run into the 1880s. The acreage encyclopedia is the history hub and the Pacific article, not a second land-grant chapter here.

The construction company that had built Union Pacific, Crédit Mobilier of America, blew up in the newspapers in 1872. Congress investigated through 1873. Stock had gone to members of Congress. The golden spike did not cause it. Inflated construction contracts did. That scandal is why a later generation treated Pacific land and bonds as a theft story. The construction encyclopedia remains transcontinental.

Then the boom broke. Roads had been laying on the order of several thousand miles a year. Jay Cooke & Company, financing the Northern Pacific, could not sell the bonds. The house closed September 18, 1873. Banks followed. The Northern Pacific did not vanish that afternoon; construction stalled, and the government later talked about the charter. Henry Villard and others finished the road to the Pacific in 1883. Cooke’s failure is the Panic. The NP as a finished transcontinental is the 1880s. The company history is Northern Pacific and can be found there.

Currier and Ives 1870 lithograph The Express Train

“The Express Train” (1870). Currier & Ives lithograph. James Ives had been a partner since 1857; 1870s sheets are C&I. American-Rails.com collection.

Steel rail, automatic brake, still link-and-pin

The first American Bessemer rail is a May 25, 1865 Chicago Rolling Mill date, owned on the 1860s leaf. This decade is when steel becomes what a busy main is laid with. Iron T-rail survived on branches and cheap construction.

George Westinghouse’s straight-air patent is April 13, 1869. It pushed air from the locomotive to apply the brakes. A broken hose left the train without brakes. The automatic brake—auxiliary reservoir on each car, triple valve, brakes that apply if the pipe loses pressure—is patents March 5, 1872 (U.S. 124,404 and 124,405). Pennsylvania had already standardized the earlier Westinghouse brake on passenger trains around 1870. New York Central moved after the 1871 Pacific Express fire near Poughkeepsie. By the late 1870s most passenger cars had air brakes. Freight did not. Brakemen still walked roofs. The Safety Appliance Act is 1893. The hardware history is found at Westinghouse.

Eli Janney’s knuckle coupler is an 1868 patent. Roads tried it. Link-and-pin still coupled most of the freight fleet, and it still took fingers. Master Car Builders adopted a Janney type in 1887. Federal law is 1893. This decade owns early use, not the national standard. Pullman hotel and dining cars, dated 1867–68 on the 1860s leaf, became ordinary amenities on the better trains now. The diner was not invented in 1875. Parlor and chair cars spread. Freight-car types the live copy listed (box, flat, hopper, tank, gon, caboose) were already in the language; they were not a 1870s invention list. Car types can be found on passenger and freight.

Four trunks, and Chicago

The Pennsylvania was already in Chicago when the decade opened. Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago had reached the city in 1858; PRR leased it in 1869. The live copy’s “PRR arrived in 1852” is Philadelphia–Pittsburgh, not Chicago. Vanderbilt had the New York Central & Hudson River from 1869 and took the Lake Shore as the water-level path to Chicago. He died January 4, 1877. William H. Vanderbilt inherited the property. The Fast Mail of September 16, 1875 is that corridor working as one New York–Chicago machine: Railway Post Office cars, New York Central to Buffalo, Lake Shore the rest of the way, about a day. Congress cut the original extra-fast appropriation in July 1876. The lithograph at the top of this page is that train.

The Baltimore & Ohio was the late one. John W. Garrett built west from Chicago Junction (later Willard), Ohio, on the Sandusky, Mansfield & Newark. The Baltimore, Pittsburgh & Chicago / B&O Chicago line opened in November 1874. Some house histories round it to 1875. The Pittsburgh–Chicago through passenger route the live copy mentioned is 1891–93, not this decade. Erie’s own Chicago line, the Chicago & Atlantic, is the 1880s. Four trunks to Chicago is the 1870s story only if you count PRR as already there, Central via Lake Shore, B&O in 1874, and Erie still short.

West of the Missouri, without finishing the map

Promontory was 1869. What the 1870s added in the West was more stem, more land-grant construction, and a lot of paper that 1873 turned into receivership. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe pushed across Kansas and into Colorado (Pueblo 1876; Raton Pass at the end of the decade). William Barstow Strong took the operating job in 1877. California in 1883 is Santa Fe in the 1880s, not a 1870s closer. Southern Pacific, under Huntington, filled California and reached Yuma in 1877. El Paso (1881) and the Sunset Route into New Orleans are the next decade. That company history of this line is Southern Pacific.

Currier and Ives 1871 lithograph The Route to California Truckee River Sierra Nevada Central Pacific

“The Route to California: Truckee River, Sierra-Nevada, 1871.” Currier & Ives lithograph of the Central Pacific main line two years after Promontory. American-Rails.com collection.

Plains construction still met armed resistance. The Army escorted graders. Little Bighorn is June 1876. It is not a railroad operations encyclopedia, and this page will not retell Custer. The Indian Wars are the context in which the Northern Pacific and the Kansas roads were trying to lay track. The railroad fact is simpler: the West in 1880 had more miles and still no second finished northern transcontinental.

Farmers, rates, Munn

The Granger movement is this decade’s political fact, not a later ICC prologue dumped backward. Illinois rewrote its constitution in 1870 and passed railroad legislation in 1871. Wisconsin’s Potter Law is 1874. Iowa and Minnesota wrote their own. The U.S. Supreme Court in Munn v. Illinois, March 1, 1877, said a state could regulate a grain elevator as a business affected with a public interest. Railroads read that as a green light for state commissions on rates. Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific v. Illinois (1886) pulled interstate traffic back out. The Interstate Commerce Act is 1887. The Granger roads as a traffic class can be found on Granger railroads.

Ashtabula, December 29, 1876

The Lake Shore’s Pacific Express dropped through an iron Howe truss over the Ashtabula River on December 29, 1876. Cars burned. About ninety people died. Amasa Stone had insisted on the design. Angola, on the same family of roads, had already shown what stoves and wood coaches did in 1867. Ashtabula showed what a bad bridge did even after air brakes were in the shops. The disaster can be found at Ashtabula. It is not a footnote to Vanderbilt’s death five days later.

Currier and Ives 1876 lithograph Night Scene at an American Railway Junction

“Night Scene At An American Railway Junction.” Currier & Ives lithograph, 1876. American-Rails.com collection.

July 1877

Wage cuts after the Panic met a workforce that still braked by hand and still died in link-and-pin. The walkout began on the Baltimore & Ohio at Martinsburg, West Virginia, in mid-July 1877 and spread to Pittsburgh, Chicago, St. Louis, and a dozen other terminals. Militia and federal troops. Dead strikers and bystanders. It was the first national industrial strike the country had seen, and it started on a railroad. How it ran city by city is the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. This decade frame only has to say: 1873 made the cuts; 1877 was the bill.

A pamphlet, not Standard Time

Charles F. Dowd published A System of National Time for the Railroads in 1870: four belts, fifteen degrees of longitude, one hour each. William F. Allen, secretary of the Time Table Convention (later the General Time Convention), spent the rest of the decade turning that into a railroad plan along the 75th, 90th, 105th, and 120th meridians. Sandford Fleming argued for a worldwide system in 1879. None of that put the clocks over. The railroads adopted Standard Time on Sunday, November 18, 1883. The live copy treated that Sunday as the 1870s’ last development. It is the opening of the 1880s. Dowd was killed by a train at Saratoga on November 12, 1904. That irony is 1904, not 1879.

Three-foot fever, on its own leaf

General William J. Palmer chartered the Denver & Rio Grande Railway on October 27, 1870 as a 3-foot railroad. Robert Fairlie’s gauge paper and the trade press made cheap construction sound like a national system. Hilton’s count peaks in the 1880s, not here. Most of those roads were poorly built and could not interchange with standard-gauge trunks. Conversion and abandonment are later. The encyclopedia is American narrow gauge. This decade owns the charter and the pitch, not the 1,673-mile D&RG of 1887.

Currier and Ives 1871 lithograph American Railroad Scene

“American Railroad Scene” (1871). Currier & Ives lithograph. American-Rails.com collection.

By 1880

About 93,200 miles. Steel on the busy mains. Air brakes on most passenger trains, still not on the freight. Chicago reachable from Baltimore as well as from New York and Philadelphia. A Pacific railroad that was still two companies, plus a Northern Pacific that had stalled and a Santa Fe and Southern Pacific that had not yet closed their maps. Farmers had written rate laws. A Supreme Court had said the public interest was real. A strike had shown what a wage cut after a panic cost. Ashtabula had shown what a cheap bridge cost. Time zones were a pamphlet and a convention secretary. Three-foot track was a Colorado experiment that thought it was a system.

What the 1870s did not finish: one gauge, a coupler that did not take a man’s hand, air brakes on freight, a finished northern or southern transcontinental, or a federal commission on rates. The 1880s open with that list, then add Standard Time, the Southern gauge change, and the Interstate Commerce Act.

Railroad history hub — the national encyclopedia
1860s · 1880s · Civil War railroads
Great Railroad Strike of 1877 · Ashtabula · Angola Horror
Transcontinental railroad · Narrow gauge
New York Central · Baltimore & Ohio · Pennsylvania Railroad
Santa Fe · Southern Pacific · Northern Pacific · Denver & Rio Grande
Westinghouse air brake · Granger railroads · Tycoons
Passenger cars · Freight cars

Sources

Stover, John F. The Routledge Historical Atlas of the American Railroads. New York: Routledge, 1999. Mileage 52,922 (1870) and ~93,200 (1880); regional growth percentages.
Jay Cooke & Co. failure, September 18, 1873; Northern Pacific construction halt. NP last spike September 8, 1883. Company leaf /np.html.
Crédit Mobilier exposure 1872; congressional investigations 1872–73. Pacific Railway construction context on /transcontinental.html.
Last major federal railroad land-grant acts, March 3, 1871 (Texas & Pacific / related SP). Subsidy grants 1850–1871.
Westinghouse straight-air patent April 13, 1869; automatic-brake patents March 5, 1872, Nos. 124,404 and 124,405. ASME landmark note; Wabtec / Westinghouse company histories. American-Rails.com /westinghouse.html.
Janney coupler patent 1868; Master Car Builders adoption 1887; Safety Appliance Act 1893.
B&O Chicago line (Baltimore, Pittsburgh & Chicago): open November 1874 (B&O RHS / borail timeline November 23, 1874). Some summaries print 1875. Pittsburgh–Chicago through service is 1890s.
PRR to Chicago: Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago 1858; PRR lease 1869. Not 1852 (that is Philadelphia–Pittsburgh).
Railway Mail Service Fast Mail, NYC & Lake Shore, first trip September 16, 1875 (George S. Bangs). Original extra-fast service cut July 1876. Burch / Clay, Cosack lithograph, 1875—not Currier & Ives.
Ashtabula bridge disaster, December 29, 1876; American-Rails.com /ashtabula.html. Angola, December 18, 1867, /angola.html.
Munn v. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113 (March 1, 1877). Wabash (1886) and Interstate Commerce Act (1887) are the 1880s.
Great Railroad Strike, July 1877; American-Rails.com /1877.html.
Cornelius Vanderbilt died January 4, 1877. NYC / Lake Shore: /york.html.
Charles F. Dowd, A System of National Time for the Railroads (1870). Railroad Standard Time adopted November 18, 1883.
Denver & Rio Grande charter October 27, 1870. Hilton, George W. American Narrow Gauge Railroads. Encyclopedia on /narrow-gauge.html.
Bryant, Keith L., Jr. History of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway (Colorado/Raton in this decade; California 1883). Huntington / SP east of Yuma mostly 1880s.
McCready, Albert L., and Lawrence W. Sagle. Railroads in the Days of Steam. Use for period color, not for NP-as-finished-in-1873.
American-Rails.com: history hub mileage table; 1860s leaf; transcontinental; 1877 strike; Ashtabula; Westinghouse; narrow gauge; Granger; NYC; B&O; PRR; Santa Fe; SP; NP.

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