The public conviction that a railroad linking the West and the East was an absolute necessity became so pronounced after the gold discoveries of '49 that Congress passed an act in 1853 providing for a survey of several lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

People began to understand that with the acquisition of California the nation had obtained practically half a continent, of which the future possibilities were almost unlimited, so far as the development of natural resources and the genera production of wealth were concerned.

The financial history of the Baltimore and Ohio since the close of the nineteenth century is interesting chiefly in connection with changes in the control of the property

With the reorganization of 1898 finished, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad entered a new period in its history.

Great men are usually the products of their times and one of the men developed by these times takes rank with the greatest railroad leaders in history.

The construction of extensive railways, however, and particularly the consolidation of small, experimental lines into large systems, dates from the days of the discovery of gold in California

The history of the Erie Railroad ever since 1901 has been a record of progress