The Americas

by Michael Frewston

  In November, 1853, the ENER decided to convert this last remaining stretch of line to the Ohio broad gauge of 1473 mm. While this was still slightly different from the 1435 mm used in NY State, the railway proposed the use of the ‘compromise’ coaches and freight cars to enable through running on both gauges.

  The citizens of Erie did not take kindly to the obvious loss of business that was to ensue if trains didn’t have to stop in Erie, and the city, even before any actual gauge conversion took place, enacted various ordinances that prohibited the ENER from running any trains at Ohio gauge through the city’s streets (and indeed such ordinances prohibited the corollary to that, namely the running of any Franklin Canal Railroad tracks at Erie’s western periphery at anything other than Ohio gauge – the break of gauge in Erie must be preserved).

  The ENER, however, simply ignored these ordinances, and started to build the new link to Ohio gauge. On 26th November, 1853, sleepers (ties) set at the Ohio gauge were discovered by the city council in Erie’s streets, as well as the construction of new bridges.

  A new ordinance was passed: "Resolved, That the mayor be instructed to call out the police force of the city to remove the bridges from the streets of the city, now used by the Erie & North East Railroad Company at any time that he, the mayor may deem necessary, in order to preserve the present railroad gauge, and to preserve the peace of the city, in accordance with the ordinance of July 19, 1853. Also any bridge or obstruction crossing any street used by the Western Railroad Company within the limits of the city."

  Mayhem was soon to follow. In December 1853, in Harborcreek, 11 km away to the east, the residents there took the law into their own hands, and proceeded to remove the newly-laid tracks between the two towns, along with dismantling sections of bridges. The ENER replaced those tracks and repaired the bridges, yet, just three days later, Harborcreek’s citizens went on the rampage again, destroying everything as fast as the ENER could build it. In desperation, the ENER obtained a State court injunction, complete with the seal of the USA – which the mayor of Harborcreek himself threw into the mud and stamped on it, saying that his heel mark was ‘the seal of Harborcreek’.

  Matters escalated further. Physical fighting took place, with people ending up being shot. Erie’s mayor appointed 150 ‘special constables’ to stop any further Ohio gauge railway building by the ENER. Further destruction of track and infrastructure took place. Finally, the governor of Pennsylvania stepped in, and actually supported Erie’s narrow interests, even though he must have recognised that those interests were to the detriment of the wider travelling public.

  News of the Erie gauge war had reached New York City. The editor of the New York Tribune, Horace Greely, after having endured missed connections and a wintry open sleigh ride between Harborcreek and Erie, as part of his journey to the town of Adrian in Michigan, declared in an editorial: “Let Erie be avoided by all travellers until grass shall grow in her streets and till her pie-men in despair shall move away to some other city.”

  A solution was however reached in the following month, January 1854. The Franklin Canal Railroad became part of the Cleveland, Painesville & Ashtabula Railroad, and it funded the building of the Erie and Pittsburgh Railroad, while the ENER funded the building of the Sunbury & Erie Railroad – one to Ohio gauge and the other to Standard gauge, but with through running possible using ‘compromise’ vehicles. By the beginning of February, 1854, Ohio gauge tracks were being laid in Erie’s streets.

  Thus ended the Erie Gauge War – but it was soon to be overshadowed anyway by the next war in America’s history, the Civil War. Three years later, the State of Pennsylvania legislated that all railways within the State shall be to Standard gauge, making the Erie Gauge War, in retrospect, a rather pointless exercise.

  The American Civil War:

  [Author’s note: I am including some history here which I am sure will be common knowledge to my US readers, but is likely unfamiliar for those from outside the US.]

  The year of 1861 was a turning point for America’s railways. It was the year that the American Civil War broke out. It is considered to be one of the first wars, if not the first war, in which the railway was used as a fundamental and strategic tool – and in this case by both sides. Like we saw in later years in World Wars I and II (see Part 1), the differences in gauges between the railways under the control of the warring factions led to outcomes which might have been very different if there had been a common railway gauge.

  In the case of the American Civil War, this war was focussed throughout the eastern and southern United States – and, as seen in the contemporary map below (western section only, also see map above for eastern Confederate gauges), the south used wider railway gauges than were prevalent in the north and the east.

  The Civil War was the result of increasing acrimony between the Confederate South and the Unionist North, with the issue of slavery as one of the main reasons why the two sides disagreed so fundamentally, to the point that there was a real danger the USA would split apart. In short, the South wanted to maintain slavery, the Union wanted it abolished.

  At this period of time, the USA had a population of approximately 30 million, of which around 3.5 million were slaves. The remaining 26.5 million consisted of 21 million in the north and 5.5 million in the south. (I should add that these numbers are an average of a number of sources all differing in the exact USA population at this time.)

  With the War beginning in April 1861, it was the South that fired the first shots, at Fort Sumter. Both sides soon realised the strategic potential in being able to use the railways to move both military personnel and their weaponry and supplies, along with other goods and materials needed for the war effort. The Union particularly considered that the railways could be the key factor in crushing the insurrections coming from the Confederates. However, it was the Confederates who were the quicker in putting these realisations into practice.

  By this time in America’s railway history, over 200 railways were in operation, some joined up, but most stand-alone. These 200 or more railways of course encompassed at least six different gauges.

  In 1861, there were about 50 000 km of railways in the US. Most of this (35 000 km) was in the north, primarily (though not exclusively) to a mix of Standard gauge, Ohio broad gauge, or one of the compromise gauges (which all allowed a degree of through running), as well as some 1829 mm gauge in New York State.

  Little more than 15 000 km of railway route distance was in the southern states that wanted to break away, and the railways in these states were primarily, and more or less equally split between, 1524 mm and 1676 mm gauge. The Confederate states of North Carolina and Virginia, however, had railways to 1435 mm Standard gauge. Thus the rebel states encompassed three different gauges.

  The North had a huge advantage in being able to transport troops and supplies more quickly over railways that had essentially a common gauge that would, in most cases, permit through running and fast deployment – yet it failed to grasp this advantage for far too long. By contrast, the South, notwithstanding its inherent disadvantage in having a fractured railway system, involving many breaks of gauge at key points, was much quicker on the uptake in using its railways to mobilise troops and supplies to wherever they were needed.

  The first example of this disparity was in mid-1861, when the war was just a couple of months old. In the first Battle of Bull Run, General McDowell was commanding a large Union army – but one that was rather unprepared for battle. The Confederate forces, centred in Richmond, Virginia, and under the command of General Beuregard, while being equally unprepared, defeated the Union forces at Bull Run. Much of this early Confederate success was down to that famous commander, General ‘Stonewall’ Jackson.

  Jackson was always able to remain one step ahead of the Union forces by quickly transporting troops by rail to the next battleground, notwithstanding that he sometimes had to contend with railways using different gauges, and which necessitated the losing of valuable time every
time there was a break of gauge. At this juncture, the South definitely had the edge.

  The North put Lieutenant-General Ulysses S Grant in control. Grant could see what the South was doing – and used the same tactics himself. He had the advantage however of railways that used predominantly the same gauge, which advantage he used to ensure that many battalions could be concurrently repositioned quickly in a series of pro-active multiple assaults, rather than the individual reactive tactics that had been used so far. It was a strategy that started to give the North an advantage.

  Both sides used destructive tactics to prevent the other from using their railways. The South would sabotage their own lines in areas that were coming under Union attack, and which they knew they were going to lose. The North continued to decimate the South’s railways by destroying as much of their track as they could – including the infamous Sherman ‘Bowties’. Under the direction of General Sherman, these were lengths of iron rail placed within piles of burning sleepers, or ties, and then, while red hot, twisted around a tree into the shape of a bowtie. By the time they had cooled, it was impossible for the Confederate forces to re-use them in reconstructing the trackwork.

  The Union built upon the advantage of its greater railway capability (along with a large industrial base which the South didn’t have), by pre-manufacturing as much railway infrastructure as it could ahead of time, including bridges and other assemblies, all under the direction of General Haupt, a former railway engineer.

  It didn’t however all go the Union’s way, even in the later stages of the Civil War. General Grant had to retreat to Memphis, Tennessee, when the railway he was using to supply his troops, the Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad, was severely damaged by rebel forces. Grant got his revenge the following year, when he wiped out the railways serving Jackson, Mississippi and Vicksburg, Tennessee.

  The Confederacy also managed to build a line, gauge unknown, but possibly to Standard gauge, between Danville in Virginia and Greensboro in North Carolina. Another line was also built by the Confederacy, between Manassas Junction and Centreville, Virginia, and known as the Centreville Military Railway. These lines, in giving the rebel forces some additional railway-based capability, were a key factor in prolonging the Civil War long after the Union’s troops should have brought it to an end.

  In April, 1863, with the War now two years old, a meeting was held between Congress, via Secretary Seddon, and the presidents of the railways in the south, asking for a resolution, through legislation, to the disparity in railway gauges. But nothing was done, with the result that the Confederate forces were still fighting at a grave disadvantage compared with the Union troops. The Confederate troops responded by enacting a program of ‘impressement’ – the forcible expropriation of all railways by the military.

  The Civil War’s turning point came when General Grant, during the siege of Richmond and Petersburg, used the railways to supply his army, up to then in a state of starvation, with much needed food and water. With huge lengths of common gauge trackwork at his disposal, most of it rebuilt many times by General Sherman and his troops, who were highly trained in railway building, Grant was finally able to overcome the rebel forces, and the North ultimately defeated the South. The Union of the United States was thus saved.

  One can only speculate as to the outcome of the Civil War – and hence the very future of the USA itself – if the South’s railways had been to at least a single common gauge. One could speculate even further on the outcome, if that common gauge had been the same as that in the North, Standard gauge. Could the South’s troops, given that a single common gauge would have facilitated far greater mobility than they were able to actually achieve, and that initially they were the better fighters, have defeated the Unionist troops to the North?

  They were certainly quicker, at least in the early stages of the War, to use the railways as a strategic tool than was the North, and could fight battles on at least equal terms with Unionist troops, but were severely hampered by the gauge disparity of their railways – a disparity that was absent in the North. A common gauge might have meant a very different USA – or even no United States at all – than we see today.

  The Transcontinental Link:

  In 1848, the state of California passed from Mexican hands to the United States. With the discovery of gold in California, as well as new communities springing up in the western states, especially those of the prosperous Mormons in Utah, it became clear by the end of the 1840s that a transcontinental railway link was becoming increasingly necessary.

  A number of proposals were put forward, and even submitted to the federal government, culminating in a Bill put forward to Congress in 1855 to advance the construction of railways linking east and west coasts. In fact, a US Senator, Jefferson Davis, considered such a railway essential to the cause of promoting national unity, by declaring: “I have thought it an achievement worthy of our age and of our people, to couple with bonds of iron the people of the Pacific with the valley of the Mississippi.”

  Huge incentives were offered by the government to any railway building such a link, many of these incentives being in the form of valuable government-backed bonds, as well as attached land rights each side of the railway, which the railway could then sell off to settlers at a greatly increased price. These land rights actually encompassed 10% of the entire area of the USA.

  This Bill proposed three primary routes – the Northern Pacific, Central Pacific and Southern Pacific. While this first Bill was turned down by Congress, due to disagreements on the precise route, an Act was later passed – hastened it should be added by the Civil War which was in full swing at the time, and where the issue of slavery became part of the political wrangling in getting the route agreed – to form two railways: the first being what was known as the Union Pacific Railroad Company (UPR) and the second being essentially the original Central Pacific Railroad (CPR). The Pacific Railway Act (PRA), which was passed on 1st July, 1862, and signed by President Lincoln, stated that: “The track upon the entire railroad line and branches shall be of uniform width, to be determined by the President of the United States, so that, when completed, cars can be run from the Missouri River to the pacific coast...."

  The UPR was charged with extending the existing rail lines westwards from the existing western terminus, or railhead, on the Missouri River in the state of Missouri; while the CPR was charged with advancing east from the Pacific coast.

  But what gauge should be used? The PRA simply stated that only a uniform gauge shall be used (and to be selected by the President, no less!), but otherwise it was silent on the choice of gauge.

  There was already a railway in California using a gauge of 1524 mm, while at the other end of the proposed link, railways in Missouri were using a gauge of 1676 mm. There was therefore a lot of pressure – and logic even – to using a gauge wider than Standard. But whether it should be the 1524 mm of California or the 1676 mm of Missouri appears to not have been decided upon.

  In fact, it is possible that the CPR and the UPR could have each decided to use their own gauge (1676 mm and 1524 mm respectively), in defiance of the PRA, with a break of gauge at their agreed meeting up point on the California-Nevada state border. The problem with that idea was that the UPR also envisaged links with other railways in the north-east, especially the B&O (which was using what was now being called Standard gauge), and so the 1524 mm gauge, never mind the 1676 mm gauge, was not really the ideal gauge for the coast-to-coast link.

  The B&O had already long established the use of Standard gauge (1435 mm) for its railways. Not only did the UPR want to use this gauge for the Transcontinental Link, but the CPR decided it wanted to use it also.

  So would these railways settle on the use of 1435 mm Standard gauge, rather than one or other of the broad gauges? President Lincoln himself intervened, under the authority of Congress, in order to settle the matter.

  Lincoln personally decided, on the advice of eminent railway engineers, that the gauge of the CPR/
UPR should be 1524 mm – not Standard gauge, and not 1676 mm gauge – throughout the entire line, from Missouri to California. That decision of course did not sit well with all the railways north and east of the proposed UPR, the majority of which were using 1435 mm gauge, or something close to it, such as 1448 mm, or even the Ohio broad gauge of 1473 mm.

  With huge opposition mounting from the eastern states, the matter of the transcontinental railway’s gauge was again debated in Congress, and this time the eastern states (as well as the UPR itself) must have got their way.

  In what may be regarded as the first sign of foresight (as well as government intervention) in establishing America’s railway gauges, a supplementary Act to the PRA, passed on 3rd March, 1863, set out the gauge to be used for the Transcontinental railway, which read as follows:

  “AN ACT to establish the gauge of the Pacific railroad and its branches. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the gauge of the Pacific railroad and its branches throughout their whole extent, from the Pacific coast to the Missouri river, shall be, and hereby is, established at four feet eight and one-half inches.”

  It was, when you think about it, a decision that had consequences that extended far beyond the gauge of solely the transcontinental CPR/UPR. If, say, the 1524 mm gauge had prevailed, that would have been tantamount to forcing all the by now long established railways in the north and the east (especially the B&O, but also the PRR) to convert their gauges to that established in large areas of the south – 1524 mm. That would hardly have been very popular in the light of the Civil War which was still raging, and which the north was slowly winning. If the north had ‘lost’ this particular battle, allowing Confederate troops unhindered access over railways that had the same gauge as theirs, one could even speculate that the Civil War might have then gone on for longer than it did!