Before there were Ford Model T’s on the road or American Airways in the sky, railroads carried passengers from coast to coast. Cleveland Public Library has an amazing collection of resources on railroads, including but not limited to: books and periodicals on the history of railroad companies and unions, annual reports, trade magazines, and photographs.
Cleveland has some interesting railroad connections. In 1910, four of the seven large Ohio railroad systems had terminals in Cleveland. These four systems were: Baltimore and Ohio, Erie, Pennsylvania, and New York Central. According to an estimate based on the U.S. Census of 1910 (Table 1) there were approximately 788 conductors employed in Cleveland in 1915.