The first steam engine railway travel took place 209 years ago today. Here, the story of how the Civil War impeded, and then accelerated, the progress of America's trains.

All maps credit Charles O. Paullin, Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States(1932), via

That progress you see in the above three maps was because of the steam engine. 1830 gave us Tom Thumb, the first U.S. steam locomotive, in Baltimore. And from there these machines took off.

But before we could build the transcontinental railroad, the Civil War broke out, which temporarily stalled things. Ultimately, however, the war accelerated the ubiquity of trains. Railway and bridges were destroyed, and Americans learned to rebuild them better and faster.

Hanover Junction PA, 1863. A crowd gathers to greet Abraham Lincoln on his way to Gettysburg [Library of Congress]

Steam engines amid the ruins of a Confederate roundhouse in Atlanta in 1864 [Library of Congress]

According to William Thomas, in The Iron Way, "The South possessed some of the most beautiful depots and railroad facilities in the nation in 1861. Sherman's campaigns sought to dismantle the Confederate railroad system and in so doing deny any claim to modernity and progress."