I would like to know where I can locate information on when each railroad was started up and ended. The day, month, year when it started service and ended service. I believe there was about 140 different railroads in the United States at ne time. Example would be the Transcontinental railroad which was May 10, 1869. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Stu

It is a big mess. First of all, there were more than 140 railroads, and then you have to define "railroad" (common carrier, connected to national network, standard gauge, industrial, logging, etc.). Then, there is the incorporation date, perhaps a state or Federal charter date, but then the actual date they started to lay track. Then there are shell corporations created to aid financing or shield the parent company from bankruptcy. Then there are really old firms, like the B&O, that actively expanded over a 100 year period. Is that one railroad?

As a starting point - check out

http://www.railroadiana.org/pgRRNames.php

at least you can get some of the names.

Otherwise, you will have to access the Railroad Commissioners Reports for each state starting in the 1800s.

Another angle to pursue is the Association of American Railroads and the American Shortline Association - I don't know if they have archives that are open to research.

Good luck.....

If you are interested in a particular time, one reference is

Poor's Manual of the Railroads of the United States.

It was published under variations of this title from 1868 until 1924.

According to U.C. Berkeley's on-line catalog, it was absorbed into the Railroad section of Moodys manual of railroads and corporation securities in 1919

I'll second Steve's comments about railroad corporations being a real corporate legal mess.

As strictly the "tip of the iceberg," I will refer you to "The Historical Guide to North American Railroads," by George H. Drury. This book, first published in 1985 and last published in 1999, is no longer available direct from Kalmbach, its publisher, but is still on Amazon, Alibrius, and at many libraries. For what you want to learn, it's worth all $40 or more you'll have to spend. (As I type, you can get an earlier edition as cheap as $4.73..........)

Unfortunately, for an entire picture, you'd better pray. Or do a LOT of grunt work. Most stretches of railroad in the USA started as a small private line founded by local people with local money, and were "bought" or leased by larger railroads, which were then leased/owned by larger corporations yet. As but one lowly example, within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, what became known as the Pennsylvania Railroad was a vast compilation of no less than 145 such separate railroad companies. And I'm not mentioning the Reading, Lehigh Valley, NYC, B&O, WM, DL&W, Erie........

A branch line going through Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania was started as the Middle Creek Railroad in 1865, was reorganized as the Sunbury & Lewistown RR in 1870, and was leased for 99 years by trustees of the PRR just days before the first train ran in December 1871. The company technically went bankrupt in 1874, was "closed," and reopened as the S&L Railway by the PRR who bought out remaining shares and eventually reissued shares twice before sweeping it under the name "Schuylkill & Juniata RR" along with several other lines in 1900 and then formally under the PRR in 1902. From there, the east end (after severance in the middle in three separate abandonments in the 1950s through 1976) went to Penn Central, Conrail, and NS. The west end was the same until a local government body bought it in 1995 or thereabouts and leased it to yet ANOTHER company............

Now, that was ONE 43-mile stretch of track. Eleven companies/ownerships. And I haven't even brought up two bridge companies involved. Never mind that it looks largely like a PRR operation the whole time.

Now, let me introduce to you the concept of "paper railroads"..............

There is a book named "California Railroads" by Alvin A. Fickewirth and published by Golden West Books. Mr Fickewirth lists "over 1,400 railroads that either ran, were proposed, surveyed or constructed within the state of California."

Good luck on your research

A book with the title RAILROAD NAMES by the late William D. Edson would give you most of what you are looking for as railroads merged and changed their names. But it won't cover private lines, industrial or logging operations, etc. Some libraries have copies.

One of my retirement projects is to make a family tree of railroading. I have a 50’s railroad map that shows 65 separate railroads. We all know where it ends up, with just a handful of major roads. Each tree branch a merger or acquisition with the railroads herald at the tip of each branch, the big survivors at the base. May be in the form of a timeline.

I cannot imagine why you need to know all that info for each railroad forever, except for really wanting to have encyclopedic knowledge of everything. Which some people have (Um... Hilton, Withuhn, Conrad, ???), and it is great. Wikipedia has some options, and there are a couple books:

Current Railroads (around 650)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_carrier_freight_railroads_in_the_United_States

Interurbans (maybe 700 - built, not just projected to swindle just like junk mortgages)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_interurban_railways_in_North_America
Interurban history by Hilton and Due
http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?id=681

Narrow gauge (thousands)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrow_gauge_railroads_in_the_United_States
Narrow gauge history by Hilton
http://books.google.com/books?id=7POj8GvF4sIC&lpg=PP1&ots=OozmeaCXNc&dq=American%20Narrow%20Gauge%20%20Railroads&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false