Civil War Tech

[timewalker]

I have read that a part of the problem was that two or more rail lines would come into a city, but that city would fight to make sure that each track ended when it came into town, forcing people to change trains. That way, they would visit local stores/restaurants and have to use local men and wagons to move the freight from one rail line to the other. There's no economic benefit to a train which simply goes straight through town non-stop.

[ole]

Sitting here with the map in front of me, I see that the gauge change problem was probably more inconvenient in the northern system. From Indianapolis west, and including Michigan, the gauge was 4' 8.5." The exceptions include a single 6' line from St. Louis to Cincinnati, and and few mixed lines west from St. Louis (not reaching KC). Northwestern Indiana and most of Ohio was 4' 10" track with two leading to Chicago (one from Indianapolis and another stretching from Pittsburg. There are a few other gauge changes further east.

In the south, there were two (maybe three gauges. It's difficult for me to differentiate between two shades of orange). Memphis to Chattanooga was a straight shot; Mobile to Atlanta was circuitous. It was possible to have a straight shot from Memphis to Richmond.

Just because the gauges were the same doesn't mean that cars, passengers, or both didn't have to trundle through town to another depo (just using the officially approved spelling). See Baltimore.

I think the major problem in the south was that, as Larry said, that the railroads didn't go anywhere. There's one in central Alabama that starts no where and goes nowhere. I figure it was built collect cotton bales and deliver them to the nearest river where they could be boated down to Mobile. (From an Olmstead observation.) There were several roads in Georgia; all of them leading from nowhere to Atlanta or Savannah.

I still can't, for the life of me, understand how Longstreet got from Virginia to Chattanooga.

ole