The Elephants Tail

[jacon12]

I'm new to railfanning and model railroading. Very new. For the last few days I've been reading what I could find on railroads and particularly those in my home state of Georgia. I've been amazed at the number of 'railroads' that have existed here beginning in the early part of the 1800's. Existed and now departed, leaving in some cases only a short stretch of almost forgotten rails in the Georgia pines. I've been trying to grasp this all and it's been a little like the blindfolded fella with the elephant's tail in his hand trying to understand what he has and trying to decribe the entire animal. Some of these railroads were only 10 miles in length, while others were longer but not by much.
I get the sense that back then almost anyone could start up their own railroad, usually naming it after the towns it connected, like the Toomsboro & Wadley RR. I wonder who these men were, businessmen who owned some type industry in the particular towns and needed to transport their products to the 'main' line? Or were they simply 'railroad' people that saw a need in an area and came in and built the line? So many of them came and went quickly, being either abandoned or bought by another RR company. Bankruptcy I'm sure took its toll, but railroads were being built and expanded like there was no tomorrow. Federally, state and county funded, of course. My guess is that a major reason for those abandoned lines was the steady improvement of roads and trucking lines, maybe couple with industries, like timber, that started to fail for some reason or another. Federal, state or county funded, of course.
Am I fairly correct in my assumptions so far?
Jacon

[DSchmitt]

Actually most failed years before the improvement of the roads and the advent of the trucking companies because there was never a legitmate economic reason for their existance. Others failed due to the closure of the businesses or industries they served.

Most of the projects were under financed and were proposed by busiessmen or local communities. Some were just scams (including a few which actually got built).

[jacon12]

Right, DSchmitt... looking back at some of the dates they were in business and knowing a little bit about the area they were in I wonder why some were built. Maybe thinking the larger lines would buy them out at a profit?
I dunno.
Jacon

[Anonymous]

Railroad fever swept much of the country in the 1800's and your area probably didn't escape the epidemic. Towns and villages saw the kiss of death, real or imagined, if the railroads passed them by. A common method used by the town fathers to raise money for construction was through the sale of bonds. Many of the backers of these lines, (most if you read some railroad historians,) were little more than common crooks. 'Jasper P. Coots', who owned the feed store and a partnership in the new line would put the pressure on every poor dirt farmer that walked through his door to put his life savings into the railroad with dire predictions that if they didn't build the line to his door, every farmer in town would go belly up along with him. As it turned out, many a poor farmer did go belly-up but old Jasper, an early version of Ken Lay, somehow managed to thrive as the partially built RR bit the dirt.

A less cynical reason why rails to nowhere are still found in the deep woods: In the Adirondacks, logging and mining required the building of rail lines to carry logs & ore. As the wilderness was clearcut with scarcely a toothpick to be gleaned (and fires burning hundreds of thousands of acres every so often,) rails were pulled up from the played-out rights-of-way and relaid in other areas. These were short-shelf-life roads with rough cut ties laid on grade and ballasted with dirt if they were lucky. When the rails were pulled up and a few years passed, little remained to tell a railroad ever ran through there except a meandering little path to nowhere.

Wayne

[Anonymous]

Many 19th Century railroads existed only on paper--they never got so far as grading a foot of right-of-way. Not only railroading, but many notions about corporations were in periods of infancy. And the amount of capital it took to build a railroad in those days was staggering. Without a vast investment of capital by Europeans, the North American rail system never could have been built.

Most railroads were proposed or built by corporations. Practically, and legally in most places, it was impossible for an individual to build a railroad. In many states it was necessary to obtain a charter from the state legislature to construct a railroad, and the charter generally specified the route to be used--or at least the end points. Given the amounts of money flowing around, and the anticipated profits, graft and corruption went on to degrees we still find shocking today.

If enough money was left after paying bribes to political office holders, there was another level at which corrupt diversion of moneys took place before construction commenced. It was soon discovered that great profits could be reaped just by contracting to construct a railroad--often the promoters of the railroad made contracts with construction companies or suppliers which they themselves secretly controlled. Moneys were paid over from railroad treasuries to these entities, and sometimes the supposed contractors skipped town without ever turning a shovelfull of dirt.

So--just because one can find incorporation documents, or charters, or media accounts predicting the imminent arrival of the railroad--that doesn't necessarily mean any particular road ever got built.

John