{"id":30880,"date":"2024-04-25T14:41:24","date_gmt":"2024-04-25T04:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=30880"},"modified":"2024-04-25T14:41:30","modified_gmt":"2024-04-25T04:41:30","slug":"how-trains-linked-rival-port-cities-along-the-us-east-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=30880","title":{"rendered":"How trains linked rival port cities along the US East Coast"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Northeast corridor is America\u2019s busiest rail line. Each day, its trains deliver 800,000 passengers<\/a> to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington and points in between. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Northeast corridor is also a name for the place those trains serve: the coastal plain stretching from Virginia to Massachusetts, where over 17% of the country\u2019s population lives on less than 2% of its land<\/a>. Northeasterners ride the corridor and live there too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like \u201cRust Belt,\u201d \u201cDeep South,\u201d \u201cSilicon Valley\u201d and \u201cAppalachia,\u201d \u201cCorridor\u201d has become shorthand for what many people think of as the Northeast\u2019s defining features: its brisk pace of life, high median incomes and liberal politics. In 1961, Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona wished someone had \u201csawed off the Eastern Seaboard<\/a> and let it float out to sea.\u201d In 2016, conservative F.H. Buckley disparaged \u201clawyers, academics, trust-fund babies and high-tech workers, clustered in the Acela Corridor<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a scholar of language and literature<\/a>, I\u2019m interested in what words can teach us about places. My new book, \u201cThe Northeast Corridor<\/a>,\u201d shows how America\u2019s most important rail line has shaped the Northeast\u2019s cultural identity and national reputation for almost 200 years. In my view, this bond between transit and territory will only strengthen as new federal investments<\/a> in passenger service draw more Northeasterners aboard trains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If the Northeast corridor region were an economy, it would be the fifth-largest in the world. Northeast Corridor Infrastructure and Operations Advisory Committee<\/a>, CC BY-ND<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Forming a great chain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first American railroads were stubs \u2013 strap iron curiosities that hauled marble, granite and coal in winter months when canals froze. It was not until 1830 that the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad opened the nation\u2019s first public passenger line<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Railway mania ensued. Within a few years, trains were crisscrossing the Eastern Seaboard. A new periodical, The Railroad Journal<\/a>, predicted that tracks would one day form a \u201cgreat chain which, is in our day to stretch along the Atlantic coast, and bring its chief capitals into rapid, constant, and mutually beneficial relation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Boston & Providence Railroad forged one link of this chain in New England. The Philadelphia & Trenton cast another in Pennsylvania, and the Philadelphia, Wilmington, & Baltimore hammered out a third through Delaware and Maryland. Named for the cities they linked, these carriers helped turn a collection of rival ports into a cohesive economic unit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite their rapid growth, each railroad remained a separate fiefdom beset by its own state mandates, financial shortfalls and technological limitations. An antebellum train trip from Baltimore to New York would have required multiple transfers and two ferry rides, and taken most of a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cgreat chain\u201d began to take modern shape in the late 19th century as corporate consolidations created two highly resourced super carriers: the New Haven and Pennsylvania railroads. Engineering advances permitted the construction of new bridges, embankments and terminals. With the opening of a tunnel under the Hudson River<\/a> from New Jersey to Manhattan in New York City in 1910, and a bridge over Hell Gate Strait<\/a> between the New York boroughs of Queens and the Bronx in 1917, trains could roll continuously between New England and the Chesapeake region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Throngs<\/a>
A crowd awaits the arrival of evangelist Billy Sunday at Pennsylvania Station in New York City, Jan. 1, 1915. Library of Congress<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Connecting a megalopolis<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Railroading became a way of life for Northeasterners. Physicist Albert Einstein liked watching trains click-clack through Princeton Junction during his time at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey in the 1930s and 1940s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Composer George Gershwin, who rode by rail from New York to Boston, claimed that \u201cit was on the train with its steely rhythms, its rattlety bang\u201d that \u201cI suddenly heard \u2013 and even saw on paper \u2013 the complete construction of \u2018Rhapsody [in Blue]\u2019 from beginning to end.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their fellow passengers included luminaries like poet Marianne Moore<\/a>, jazz composer and pianist Duke Ellington<\/a> and orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski<\/a>, along with countless ordinary riders whose lives sprawled across the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1961, French-Ukrainian geographer Jean Gottmann<\/a> called the Northeast a \u201cnew order in the organization of inhabited space<\/a>.\u201d Gottmann observed that unlike European nations, which developed around dominant capitals like London and Rome, the United States grew from a \u201cpolynuclear\u201d fusion of cities and suburbs that he called \u201cMegalopolis.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The relative proximity of megapolitan cities generated a \u201ctidal current of commuting\u201d between them, which Gottman experienced firsthand while riding trains between academic appointments in Baltimore, Princeton and Manhattan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of Gottman\u2019s adherents, Rhode Island Sen. Claiborne Pell, imagined the Northeast in 1962 as \u201cone long metropolitan industrial unit<\/a>.\u201d A frequent rider, Pell believed that trains played an essential role in the region\u2019s interlocking economy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Biden,<\/a>
Then-senator and Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden answers media questions aboard an Amtrak Acela train from Washington to Wilmington, Del., on Sept. 16, 2008. As a senator, Biden commuted daily by train from Delaware to Washington.AP Photo\/Gerald Herbert<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Amtrak takes over<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As railroads lost riders to cars, buses and jets in the 1960s, Pell urged President John F. Kennedy to create a government agency that would operate passenger trains for the public good. He called the tracks between Boston and Washington a \u201cpassageway for gargantuan surges of movement along our Northeast seaboard<\/a>\u201d \u2013 or, a \u201ccorridor\u201d for short.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The name stuck. When Amtrak took over U.S. intercity passenger rail travel<\/a> in 1971, the Northeast corridor hosted its most popular trains \u2013 including the stylish, if breakdown-prone Metroliners<\/a>, which whisked business-class passengers between New York and Washington at velocities topping 100 mph. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1978, the Northeast accounted for over half of Amtrak\u2019s ridership. The region\u2019s rail revival convinced Congress to spend US$1.75 billion<\/a> in the 1980s on the Northeast Corridor Improvement Project, a multi-year effort to modernize the line, renovate stations and trim schedules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2000, Amtrak debuted the Acela Express, a sleek and pricey train that was billed as the first U.S. high-speed passenger rail service<\/a>. Acela grew synonymous with its well-heeled clients, but seldom reached its top speed of 150 mph on the corridor\u2019s curving and congested tracks<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The train still became a symbol for Northeasterness. Pundits took to calling the presidential nominating contests held on the same day in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland the \u201cAcela Primary<\/a>.\u201d Conservatives railed against \u201cAcela Corridor\u201d ways of thought<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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