Prince Edward Island Railway, items from 1874 to 1925

from: unknown North American railway/steamship guide; circa 1874.

The beginning of Prince Edward Island's railway is shown on the map above. The first three images come from a very distressed copy of a publication similar to the Official Guide which was published in 1874 - the year after Prince Edward Island joined Canadian Confederation. 

Like some of the other documents reproduced here, it dislikes being crushed into the scanner glass so some areas lack a perfect focus. Except for the first, all images are sized to 1200 pixels, but Google has a funny way of handling them so their width is not uniform.

The following image shows the first surviving page of this document and it contains the only surviving reference to transportation to, or on, Prince Edward Island. 

from: unknown North American railway/steamship guide; circa 1874.

from: unknown North American railway/steamship guide; circa 1874.

While Greenwich Time became Britain's 'standard time' in 1854, a few years after its railways began to use one standard time ... it wasn't until 1883 that North American railways began to use standard one-hour time zones across the continent - hello there, Sandford Fleming! Canada's most eastern time zone at that point was known as 'Intercolonial'.

As the image above dates from 1874, the traveller's time wheel with its local solar times appears. The railway, of course, was the first invention which really gave ordinary people the need to coordinate their times over large geographical areas.

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Leaving 1874, the following pages come from a 1915 Canadian government publication which provided - to any who would need them - the altitudes calculated across Canada. As railways were the single largest source of surveyed elevations above sea level at this point, this data offers some historical insights into the early railways constructed in Canada.

from: Altitudes in Canada; James White; 1915; Commission of Conservation Canada.

from: Altitudes in Canada; James White; 1915; Commission of Conservation Canada.

from: Altitudes in Canada; James White; 1915; Commission of Conservation Canada.

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The next set of images come from a report to the Canadian Parliament. Because part of Prince Edward Island's bargain with Canada was that the Dominion would assume responsibility for PEI's railway, its officials had a reporting responsibility to the Minister of Railways and Canals, and Parliament. 

... So operating details became part of the nation's archives ... rather than private property which needed to be microfilmed and/or burned because it occupied valuable office space and was of no further use to the company.

from: Annual Report, Dept of Railways and Canals, Canada (to March 31, 1913); F Cochrane, Minister; 1914.

from: Annual Report, Dept of Railways and Canals, Canada (to March 31, 1913); F Cochrane, Minister; 1914.

Errors and Omissions Excepted - this is a fancy accounting version of 'CYA' - cover your accountant.

from: Annual Report, Dept of Railways and Canals, Canada (to March 31, 1913); F Cochrane, Minister; 1914.

The most colourful and historically interesting report is saved for last.

Plenty of  enjoyable historical interpretation could be done to thoroughly explain these old practices. 

The railway provided transportation and employment.

from: Annual Report, Dept of Railways and Canals, Canada (to March 31, 1913); F Cochrane, Minister; 1914.

from: Annual Report, Dept of Railways and Canals, Canada (to March 31, 1913); F Cochrane, Minister; 1914.

from: Annual Report, Dept of Railways and Canals, Canada (to March 31, 1913); F Cochrane, Minister; 1914.

While it is entirely possible that my knowledge of historical geography is 'off'' ... 

it seems that CNR Headquarters could be accused of showing some ignorance of local conditions ...

from: Scenic Canada; 1925; Canadian National Railways.

(the provincial port names are reversed)

The Interstate Commerce Commission - Introduction

from: American Heritage History of Railroads in America; Oliver Jensen; 1975; Forbes.

1896, Collis Potter Huntington (1821- 1900) of the Central Pacific/Southern Pacific

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Some of the ICC stats from this book are quite interesting as they provide insights into American railroad history. On the non-profit book website archive.org there are a number of similar books available free. Here is a quick introduction to the ICC and an initial posting of stats from over a century ago.

The Interstate Commerce Commission (1887-1995) was originally created to regulate US railroads.

By the late 1800s, the railroad network had grown to become essential to the US economy. There was increasing anger among some shippers, and also among members of the public, regarding the practices used by these corporations - see the cartoon above.

To be more specific: it was widely felt that the rates railroads charged in given circumstances ... and the political influence bought by these large corporations were both unfair. Eventually, this anger forced politicians in Washington to establish a unique regulatory agency - by its design, the ICC was separated from the regular direct interference of politicians.

Initially, as one might expect, its enforcement powers were too weak for the ICC to be effective as a regulator.

The following newspaper story segment came from the Boston Evening Transcript of September 15, 1899. The key idea suggested by this clipping is that 12 years after it was created, the ICC still wasn't able to do its job.

Later, some services such as telegraph, telephone and wireless also fell under its regulation (1910) as did other interstate 'common carriers' for goods and passengers by road (1935). Oil pipelines, express companies and sleeping cars, among others, were addressed in broad 1906 legislation which also gave the ICC the power to set maximum railroad rates.

Having given you this general context for the ICC's existence, this post will look at some interesting data which the ICC gathered about railroads over a century ago. But first, there was one particularly interesting action taken by the ICC in more recent US history ...

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A Historic Unforeseen Use of the ICC's Powers to Ensure Fairness ...

In 1941, the US Supreme Court overturned an ICC ruling that it was unfair for a non-white railroad passenger holding a first-class ticket to be forced to ride in a second-class passenger car.

After this defeat, it seems the ICC regulators became a little too close to those they regulated, in allowing this type of racial segregation to persist.

Then ...

From the Lodi News-Sentinel (California) of September 22, 1961. 

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Railroad Statistics from 1909

The ICC divided the US railroad system into Territories. The map below (from the same book) shows the boundaries of these areas. This division may have enabled the ICC to better tailor their rates and other regulation to regions where similar needs and economic circumstances were to be found.

Geography enthusiasts will note that the territories often match some features of the drainage systems - sometimes enclosing the watersheds of great rivers, sometimes enclosing coastal areas along which many rivers drain. 

We can imagine why population density (eg. the eastern seaboard), industrial demands (eg. the coal mining and steel industries) and Chicago's central role in the US rail network ... affected where motive power, passenger equipment and freight equipment were concentrated.

Below are some productivity statistics for equipment. 

Equipment size and power, population density, length of a typical passenger journey, line grades and curvature, and train speeds (e.g. slower in dense urban areas ... versus high speed tangents in the sparsely-populated plains) ... may account for some of the variation between territories.

The ICC did more than count cars - as future posts will show.