1883 - At exactly noon on this day, American and Canadian railroads begin using four continental time zones to end the confusion of dealing with thousands of local times. The bold move was emblematic of the power shared by the railroad companies.
1918 - Congress officially adopted the railroad time zones and put them under the supervision of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
1863-1869 - The First Transcontinental Railroad connected the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Omaha, Nebraska/Council Bluffs, Iowa with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay.
1894 - The Pullman Strike was a nationwide railroad strike in the United States. The strike and boycott shut down much of the nation's freight and passenger traffic west of Detroit, Michigan.
1873 - The financial crisis, along with falling crop prices, increases in railroad fees to ship crops, and Congress’s reduction of paper money in favor of gold and silver devastated farmers’ livelihoods and caused a surge in Grange membership in the mid-1870s.
1876 - Munn. V Illinois gives states the right to regulate railroads
1897 - The Supreme Court ruled they could not set maximum railroad rights.
1893 - Also known as The Panic of 1893 caused nationwide economic collapse
