To this end, the Pennsylvania Railroad was incorporated on April 13, 1846, with a franchise permitting the construction of a railroad across the State from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh.

When the scheme for the construction of a railroad from Baltimore to the waters of the Ohio River first began to take form, the United States had barely emerged from the Revolutionary period.

The close relationship between railroad expansion and the genera development and prosperity of the country is nowhere brought more distinctly into relief than in connection with the construction of the Pacific railroads.

The railroad originally was as completely dissociated from steam propulsion as was the ship.

Practically no railroad, even as late as the sixties, was wider than another. They were all single-tracked lines.

In 1906 the Pennsylvania began to dispose of the bulk of its holdings in competing properties, the most notable transactions being the sale of its entire interest in the Chesapeake and Ohio to independent interests and a substantial part of its Baltimore and Ohio holdings to the Union Pacific Railroad.