South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company

…to the older and larger South Carolina port. Theirs was considered mainly as a regional rail line, which began service with a single locomotive. The hope was that the early years of operation would earn enough profit that the line might be improved on retained earnings and that success for…

The company’s earliest antecedent, the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company, was chartered in 1827 and operated the country’s first regularly scheduled passenger train, on Christmas Day, 1830. In three years the line became the world’s longest railway. Many of the predecessor lines played a strategic role in the American…