Railroad Enthusiast Addresses Historical Society

Just think, where would the United States have been without railroads?

The question was asked by Floyd Rider, who spoke Saturday at the fall meeting of the Sebring Historical Society.

America's first common carrier railroad, the Baltimore & Ohio, was started in 1826, said Rider.

By 1869, the golden spike was driven in the last railroad tie at Promontory Summit, commemorating the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, joining the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. By then, there were more than 100,000 miles of track in the nation.

"People rode from coast to coast," Rider commented, "because they could."

Rider was introduced by historical society archivist Carol Goad as an inventor and the maker of farm equipment. Rider farmed in Ohio until 1930, when illness forced him to seek a new profession and a warmer climate. In the 1960s, he designed and built grove hedging equipment - 20-feet tall, chain-driven circular saws on robotic arms, which citrus producers like Marvin Kahn used to trim the trees between the rows.

Rider also made front-end loaders, a celery harvester, tractor trenchers and forklifts modified for agriculture.

The nation's first railroad baron, Cornelius Vanderbilt, bought the New York and Harlem Railroad, the Hudson River Railroad, and the Central Railroad. By the time he died in 1877, his fortune was estimated at nearly $100 million.

"That's about $50 billion today," Rider said.

Railroads changed the way America did business, Rider said. In an agrarian society, few people cared about the time. But schedules were established, so people had to start carrying watches if they wanted to board the train.

Railroads turned small towns into big cities. Chicago, for example, was incorporated in 1837 with a few hundred people. But the first railway came 11 years later, and by 1850, it counted 30,000 people. By 1890, the population was over 1 million.

Where would Florida be if Henry Morrison Flagler hadn't decided to build his Florida East Coast Railway from Jacksonville to St. Augustine, Palm Beach, Miami and Key West, founding cities and industries along the way?

After his ship was sunk in the invasion of Africa during World War II, Rider said, he was sent to Virginia Beach. One of his shipmates wanted to visit his family on the West Coast, and they figured out a way for him to get there in 4.5 days.

Today, railroads still carry grain to make cereal, fertilizer and automobiles across the nation. Unit trains propel 100 cars, each laden with 100 tons coal.

Even so, a few years ago, Rider and his wife flew to the West Coast, near the same destination as his 1940s shipmate, and it took only 4.5 days.