What are the 5w's for the growth of the railroad industry?

Question

5ws-

who

what

when

where

and why

Answer 1

Skidderback told how it WAS, and that will get you a passing grade.

But it's not the truth.  

How it IS is that the railroads are much bigger today than in those times.  In fact the freight lines are overloaded and they are laying more track.   But nobody knows this because railroads have become an "invisible" industry not in the daily lives of Americans, kinda like the electrical grid.

Anyway, just like in the old days, the railroads are going BACK to the government to ask for help with expansion.

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/sb/ra100...

Cover story

Who - all the big railroads, Amtrak and Congress.

What - expanding the existing railroad system to handle massive amounts of new traffic.  Some of this is done with the railroads' own money, but they can't do what's needed without government aid.

When - for the past 5 years and the next 30 years

Where - draw a line from Detroit to Miami, west of that, generally.

Why - because freight traffic will double in the next 30 years.  It needs to go on rails rather than trucks.  Because the road system is already overloaded and is much harder to expand than the rail system.  Because trucks burn a lot more fuel, and that's bad for energy independence and global warming.  Railroads can be electrified and not need oil as fuel at all.

Answer 2

Who...  The railroad "Robber Barons", tycoons like Carnegie and Vanderbilt and Harriman.  "Carpet-Bagger" Politicians were usually along for the ride as well (no pun intended).  Their "monikers" speak volumes about the person.

Why...  Usually for the purpose of acquiring more wealth, holdings, property and power.

When...  From the very beginning, in the 1830's, right up to the present day.

What...  really got the ball rolling on westward expansion was the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863.  The act offered up for bid to two companies (there was no bidding... these deals were no doubt engineered in a cigar smoke filled room somewhere in DC, with the Barons of the west [aka "The Octopus" or "The Big Four] and Carpet-baggers in attendance), which were the Central Pacific building eastward from Sacramento, California, in the west and from Omaha, Nebraska, headed east was the Union Pacific.

The "biggies" were the "incentives," such as being paid more for track-age laid in mountainous territory, as well as granting each railroad one section of land (a square mile), alternating from one side of the track to the other, each and every mile they covered.  It was a fantastic opportunity for the companies, and the First Transcontinental Railroad was the out-come, completed in 1865 with the driving of the "Golden Spike" at Promontory Point, Utah.

Of course the railroads needed customers between the two points, so they either sold land to prospective cattle ranchers and farmers, or started their own towns along the way, with sweet prices for land for anyone wanting to head westward and start a new life.

There was no shortage of takers in post-Civil War, reconstructionist America.

Where... both north and south of the borders of the US and from sea to shining sea...

Good luck on your school work...