The Erie connected with the 6ft. M & O at Cincinnati which would have
allowed transit to St.Louis among other places without changing gauge.
The DL&W was also 6ft. in this time frame. However, the carriers
didn't concern themselves with the matter for many years, and
only decided to operate through passenger/express service when
they did get around to it under the pressure from the Express
and USPO organizations.
One of the things lost in most considerations of this matter was that
the operators of the time, and the general public did not find any great
inconvenience in gauge differences in the U.S. There was no through
freight rates, and very little freight was shipped by rail over long distances.
The private express companies were the first to create the agencies
and business infrastructure to handle such materials.
This led to the formation of fast freight companies (a/k/a Fast Freight
Lines). These were organized to move freight over long distances and
also on an interline basis, but had their own rail equipment, staff,
and freight terminals to provide the necessary transport, and
commercial infrastructure. In time this function was taken over by
the railways, for a variety of reasons.
Many of these reasons came from complaints about
with price gouging secondary to monopoly operations,
and the use of insider positions by railroad board
members to enrich themselves at the expense of the railroad
property- to the detriment of other stock holders, the bond
sector, and the shippers.
However, that was secondary to why no one save possibly
military tacticians , found differing gauges , especially when
there was a haul of a couple of a hundred miles available in
any one gauge of small account, through the 1870s.
Louis Hunter in his classic "STEAM BOATS on WESTERN RIVERS",
points out that there was no successful organization of
freight interchange between steam boat companies in this
era. Agreements to fix rates, and operate as Steam Boat
Lines, failed until the railroads became organized by the mid
1880s to provide regular through service. Under pressure
from organized competition the steam boat operators
belatedly tried to set up a modern infrastructure.
Prior to this anybody wanting to move goods requiring
the reloading of cargo say; to a ship bound for South Dakota,
from Pittsburgh, had to have a factotum/agent with stevedoring
and warehousing ability to handle the transfer at St. Louis.
The lack of capital, due to its high cost (20% per annum
was a low rate in antebellum to 1885 period ) meant that
one could not effectively organize at Pittsburgh to get goods
that far. In other words, factors bought goods they knew
would be saleable in the west. He may have transferred them
at Louisville ( or any other point on the river system) where
they were brokered to another factor who would get them
to a MIssouri River boat. Now some goods would be sold
by any factor at any entrepot along the way he controlled,
in order to get a more rapid return on his investment.
In many cases the ship owners acted as factors for certain
cargoes, and as freighters for the rest of the cargo. This
was adopted from the way Ocean commerce had been
conducted for centuries. It also acquired over time
the insurance systems for vessel and cargoes used
at sea (and created the HARTFORD STEAM BOILER
SAFETY Company, that revolutionized all steam engine
safety standards).
Along the way each middleman added cost to make a
profit out of each transaction to the extent it was possible.
Steamships were the cheapest line haul freighters as a
transportation mode, but were encumbered by a chaotic
infrastructure for handling general merchandise that not
only lost goods, and wasted time, but had a built in
expenses due to all the middlemen.
They were the principal mode, and railroads generally could
beat transit times, so people were not upset by what we today
would consider crappy and unreliable rail freight service.
Bulk commodities, simply did not travel long distances by rail.
They got waterborne, as soon as possible if they had to
move more than a short distance. The D&H is a good
example , because it was a canal feeder. Getting to a
canal or directly to a navigable river was the route of
all large volume products of mines and agriculture in this
epoch. Express Companies provided decent service for
personal communications, transfers of specie,
documents, and luxury goods.
The P.O.- by the way, was not organized well enough
to do these functions for the business sector.
That changes later, but is not germane to this discussion.
Telegraph companies by the end of the 1870s were qble
to provide almost instant communications over the
entirety of the land east of the Mississippi, and to certain
urban nodes on the Pacific Ocean, as well.
The Fast Freight LInes began to make the effort to
overcome, the gauge differences. This took the form of
organizing the transfer of freight on an interline
basis by: 1) setting up freight transfer terminals with
enclosed spaces to protect cargo from the elements;
2) using railway trucks with adjustable axles capable
of operating on multiple gauges of track; and 3)
setting up large railway truck changeout facilities
at points where gauges changed on a designated routing.
For minor differences (the N&W for instance was 4 ft.
9inch gauge into the period of Great War) and even
for difference of several inches the lines also employed
wide wheel tires to attempt to compensate for
differences. A good place to read about this is in
Anthony Bianculli's volume 2 on rolling stock in his four
volume , "TRAINS and TECHNOLOGY; The American
Railroad in the Nineteenth Century",
published by University of Delaware Press; 2002.
It is in print as ISBN 0- 87413-730-6 if you have deep
pockets, but you can get it on interlibrary loan or at your
local university research library.
In summary, the people circa 1840-1880 were generally
happy with what they had as transport services in the
built up portions of the country, but things they were a
changing.
The best online summary of railroad gauges is found at
the Gauge Sage, which makes interesting reading , even if
you are familiar with the matter. He is at:
<
http://www.parovoz.com/spravka/gauges-en.php >
Good-Luck, PJB
