how were most railroad companies able to finance the building of their rail lines
History of rail transport in the United States In 1860, the combined total of railroad stocks and bonds was $1.8 billion; 1897 it reached $10.6 billion (compared to a total national debt of $1.2 billion).[87] Funding came from financiers throughout the Northeast, and from Europe, especially Britain.[88] The federal government provided no cash to any other railroads. However it did provide unoccupied free land to some of the Western railroads, so they could sell it to farmers and have customers along the route. Some cash came from states, or from local governments that use money as a leverage to prevent being bypassed by the main line. The larger sound came from the southern states during the Reconstruction era, as they try to rebuild their destroyed rail system. Some states such as Maine and Texas also made land grants to local railroads; the state total was 49 million acres.[89] The emerging American financial system was based on railroad bonds. Boston was the first center, but New York by 1860 was the dominant financial market. The British invested heavily in railroads around the world, but nowhere more so than the United States; The total came to about $3 billion by 1914.[90] In 1914â€“1917, they liquidated their American assets to pay for war supplies.[91][92][93]
History of the New York City Subway The first underground line opened on October 27, 1904,[8] almost 35 years after the opening of the first elevated line in New York City, which became the IRT Ninth Avenue Line.[9] By the time the first subway opened, the lines had been consolidated into two privately owned systems, the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT, later Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation, BMT) and the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT). Many present lines were built under the Dual Contracts, and after 1913, all lines built for the IRT and most other lines built or improved for the BRT were built by the city and leased to the companies. The first line of the city-owned and operated Independent Subway System (IND) opened in 1932; this system was intended to compete with the private systems and allow some of the elevated railways to be torn down, but kept within the core of the City due to the low amount of startup capital provided to the municipal Board of Transportation, the later MTA, by the state.[10] This required it to be run "at cost", necessitating fares up to double the five-cent fare popular at the time.[11]