Lessons from History: The Great Railroad Buildout

It’s time for another history lesson—this one reaches further back than my usual fare. I spent months in books and unusual places on the internet for this piece, and I think I find the parallels to today’s AI buildout remarkable. This is the story of the railroad capital cycle: how America financed, built, overbought, and eventually consolidated the most transformative infrastructure of the 19th century. Early American History of Railroads: The Civil War and Land GrantsWhere does a cycle begin? ...