Oldest railroads in North America
This is a list of the earliest railroads in North America, including various railroad-like precursors to the general modern form of a company or government agency operating locomotive-drawn trains on metal tracks.
A Gilded Age train station sits at the summit terminus of what was one of the most important nine miles of railroad in the United States in the 1830s: the Mauch Chunk and Summit Hill Railroad, which later became the Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway. The Victorian building replaced the original offices, becoming one of the first train stations to host travelers. The first documented passenger traffic arrived in the later half of 1827 when the area down to
1934 photo of the incline section of the Granite Railway
Historical Marker of the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, incorporated in 1826 and opened in 1831
U.S. railroads in 1835
Thomas Leiper was a Scottish American businessman, banker and politician who owned a successful tobacco exportation business as well as several mills and stone quarries. He served as a lieutenant in the Philadelphia City Troop during the American Revolutionary War. He built one of the first railways in America and the first in Pennsylvania. The Leiper Railroad was a three-quarter-mile long track on his property in Nether Providence Township, Pennsylvania used to ship quarry stone to market with animal-powered carts.
The plaque at Leiper's estate commemorating the first permanent railway in the United States was originally dedicated in 1923 by the Daughters of the American Revolution and placed on the Sproul Road bridge
Leiper's estate Strathaven Hall built c. 1785 in Avondale, now Nether Providence Township, Pennsylvania
Leiper's "safety" on his estate may be the first private bank in America
Thomas Leiper's gravestone in Laurel Hill Cemetery
