Building a Railroad

In 1881 the Seney Syndicate began the business transactions that organized the Nickel Plate, or the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railway Company, as it was then called. To start a railroad in the nineteenth century required may of the same kinds of business practices entrepreneurs use today. The syndicate invested, or subscribed to an amount of stock and made the rest available to other business interests that would participate in building the road. The company was capitalized with thirty-five million dollars raised through the purchase of stock. None of the stock was made available to the public and the members of the syndicate owned the majority of shares.

Once money was made available contracts were made with surveyors who scouted the land for the new sections of rail that would have to be laid, construction of bridges was assigned to builders, and costs were determined. Building a railroad was a complex engineering job. Tracks had to be laid on flat grade and bridges had to be built to support enormous amounts of weight. A single locomotive often weighed more than fifty tons. The road running from Buffalo, New York to Chicago was estimated to require 90,000 long tons of steel rails, each weighing sixty pounds per yard and 1.5 million oak crossties. Additionally, the road required forty-nine bridges.

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