Comment by hylaride
2 days ago
A lot of them got built with per-mile subsidies and cashed out via shoddy construction. The ones that focused on long-term financial sustainability more often did fine, but it is a lesson in perverse incentives (though some would argue that afterwards cheap overbuilt lines facilitated much faster and more extensive westward expansion of people).
> shoddy construction
Just today there was a newsletter from Construction Physics about Strap Rail. Literally wooden rails with a iron plate strapped on top put in the mud. Only in the US, 10 times cheaper. But more expensive to maintain and gone in years instead of decades for normal iron rails though.
By building the initial rails cheaply, they could then bring in equipment and supplies over those rails to rebuild the railroad to a much better quality, and at a lower cost than if they had to bring that equipment and supplies in without the rails in the first instance.
That doesn't mean they always actually invested the money to rebuild properly... but it was sound engineering theory.
Of course, there were other financial shenanigans too- see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr%C3%A9dit_Mobilier_scandal
move fast, break things is never a good long term plan