POLI 100K, Railroads and American Politics: Topic 1, Why are Railroads Important?

May, 1869 Union Pacific Passenger Schedule

The Trains ran on Time. On 18 November 1883 the American Railroad Association announced that railroads would henceforth adopt Standard Time. They defined it as 4 Time Zones -- Pacific, Mountain, Central, and Eastern -- and all railroad schedules were thus coordinated on this standard time. (Great Britain had adopted Greenwich Mean Time in 1848.) The traveling public and business shippers would no longer miss their connecting trains!