I came upon this on google books.

http://books.google.com/books?id=MWY3AA ... &q&f=false

You need to jump to page about page 197 for the railroad information but the really cool stuff starts on about page 217. Here is a little example. Did you the Yazoo and Mississippi Valley employed over 7,500 people?

Assuming the image is viewable to everyone. This is an interesting page.

I noticed that the only Western railroad in the "large locomotives" chart is Santa Fe, and from what I've heard, their experience with Mallets was such that while UP, SP, WP, D&RGW and even some logging railroads bought many articulated steamers, Santa Fe decided that this was not the motive power for their operations and thereafter stuck with non-articulated engines.

That was because the Santa Fe tried out Mallets with articulated boilers, such as this:



The joint is beneath the crossover pipes, just in front of the rear cylinders. The front section of the boiler was divided into preheat and reheat sections; only the rear section was the boiler itself. Cinders from the smoke flowing through the joint would collect in the bottom of the joint, wearing it out. Two different boiler joint designs were tried; neither one held up.

It also had a Jacobs-Shupert firebox; a stayless design. The engines were oil-fired and intended for passenger work, although they were not successful in either passenger or freight service. Drury (1993) pronounces them "possibly the worst" of Santa Fe's Mallets. "The front (low-pressure) engine tended to slip, quickly using all the steam from the high-pressure engine, rendering itself useless and throwing all the load on the high-pressure engine." They were quickly converted into pairs of 2-6-2 engines; and the Santa Fe did not order any more articulated locomotives from that point forward; they left such a bad taste in the management's mouth.

EDIT: I have a copy of the color postcard this picture was taken from. It proclaims it is the World's Largest Locomotive, and it was at the time it was built. But, it was later eclipsed by others; despite what the gentleman who sold it to me tried to say.

Here is a table on the fastest trains. Some very fast running times were the order of the day. I would guess that any of these line that still host passenger service today do not have speeds as fast as back then.

Two of the English ones in the top rankings were participants in the "Race to the North":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_North

The practice of the two lines racing each other ended after a serious derailment at Preston in 1896.

Employment in the railroad industry.

One of the timetables in my collection has an interesting note. I've got to find the particular copy (or copies). But -- as I recall -- it stated that 10% of the working population of the United States worked for a railroad or a railroad related industry. I think the year was 1915.