Talk:History of rail transportation in the United States

Merger proposal
Please discuss the merger proposal at Talk:History of rail transport in North America. Thanks. Caseyjonz (talk) 06:49, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Cost for passenger rail
It would be good to add a section about costs of passenger rail; for example, fares between major cities at different points in time, compared to mean income or some similar economic indicator.--Theodore Kloba (talk) 11:29, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

New "Historiography" section
The just added new section to this article entitled "Historiography" seems to espouse the distinct POV that railroad history researched and written by "amateurs" and "rail fans" who are "fascinated by the memorabilia, technology and locomotives of the steam era" is of little value to others interested in railroad history whereas that written by "academics" and "professional historians" (who have apparently "lost interest" in the subject) is not. Railroad history is not limited to economics, business, management, corporate matters, etc. I find this position potentially misleading as much of what these "amateur" railroad historians have produced is well researched, verifiable, and provides valuable information on the technology and actual operations of railroads in providing transportation.

It should be noted that the recent contributions by some well known professional academic historians have also proved to be highly flawed as works of railroad history in the US. A prime example of this is Nothing Like It in the World by the late Professor Stephen Ambrose which proved to be rife with errors, poorly researched, and shoddily fact checked/edited. Interestingly the individuals who exposed these faults were "amateur rail fans". If this new article section is to be retained as being an objective view on this subject its contributor (whom I presume is a professional academic historian as opposed to a "rail fan") should provide a more balanced view on this matter and acknowledge the value of dedicated "amateur railroad historians" as well as shortcomings of the work of some of the "professionals" with no particular established personal interest in the subject. Centpacrr (talk) 20:07, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
 * This section Is based on the argument of Professor Klein who states: The vast bulk of this work is devoted to minute descriptions of power, rolling stock, obscure short lines, and technical subjects.... But few address the larger questions of railroad history or place their topic in broader contexts. Centpacrr seems to agree with this statement--he does not take issue with this statement or with any other statement. His complaint seems to be that Stephen Ambrose made mistakes in one of his many many books. Ambrose is not held in high regard by professional historians, although he did have an academic appointment at a small school. Ambrose churned out a great many popular books On a very wide variety of topics (only one was about railroads.)  Ambrose is never mentioned or cited in this article, so attacks on him have no relevance here. Rjensen (talk) 03:50, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Tons of Freight
By 1880 the nation had 17,800 freight locomotives carrying 23,600 tons of freight, and 22,200 passenger locomotives.

"23,600 tons of freight" is surely too low; is this 23,600 tons per day, or 23,600,000 per year? Tabletop (talk) 09:56, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Might it mean that the locomotives are capable of carrying that much? Maybe it's not supposed to tell us at all how much per time they carried. Mechanic1c (talk) 14:41, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Titles
Is there a reason why the titles with dates all have the sates in parentheses (like (1826–1860)) except for one section, "Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861–1877"? If this is just an inconsistency, it should be rectified. Mechanic1c (talk) 14:40, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Removal of blacklisted link
I have removed the blacklisted link because I can't find a replacement for these link. Agusbou2015 (talk) 23:27, 19 December 2017 (UTC)