The Oldest Railroads Still Running In America

America's railroads built the country, hauling the people, coal, and cargo that turned a rough frontier into an industrial giant. Most of the early lines have long since vanished or been swallowed up by bigger companies, but a surprising number of the very oldest are still running today, a few of them under the exact same name they carried nearly two centuries ago. Here are the oldest railroads still in operation in America.

Strasburg Rail Road, Pennsylvania (1832)

Chartered all the way back in 1832, the Strasburg Rail Road holds the crown as the oldest continuously operating railroad in America, and the oldest standard-gauge railroad anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. Running on just over four miles of track through the Amish farmland of Pennsylvania Dutch Country, it has somehow kept the wheels turning through four wars and three depressions without a single interruption. Today it hauls tourists behind gleaming steam locomotives, moves freight for nearby shippers, and serves as one of the country's great hubs for steam-engine restoration.

The Baltimore & Ohio (1827)

If Strasburg is the oldest still running under its own name, the Baltimore & Ohio is the one that started it all. Chartered on February 28, 1827, the B&O was the first common-carrier railroad in North America, built to move people and goods for the paying public, and it began running trains out of Baltimore in 1830. The B&O name itself is gone now, folded into the giant CSX system back in 1987, but those original lines never stopped working. Freight still rolls over the route of America's very first railroad today.

The Delaware & Hudson (1823)

Older still, at least on paper, is the Delaware & Hudson. It was chartered in 1823 as a canal company to haul coal, and by 1829 it had put the Stourbridge Lion, one of the first steam locomotives ever to run on American rails, into service. For that reason, the D&H long billed itself as the oldest continuously operated transportation company in the United States. The Delaware & Hudson name finally retired in 1991, but its tracks live on today as part of the CPKC network.

The Best Friend of Charleston, South Carolina (1830)

Down in South Carolina, 1830 saw the debut of the first regularly scheduled, steam-powered passenger service in the entire country, pulled by a feisty little locomotive called the Best Friend of Charleston. The line that ran it, the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road out of Charleston, was for a brief window the longest railroad in the world. It was eventually absorbed into the Southern Railway, and its route still carries freight to this day as part of Norfolk Southern.

Mount Washington Cog Railway, New Hampshire (1869)

Not every old railroad runs on the flat. Opened in 1869, the Mount Washington Cog Railway was the world's first mountain-climbing cog railway, using a toothed central rail to haul itself up grades as steep as 37 percent. More than 150 years later, it still grinds its way to the 6,288-foot summit of Mount Washington, home to some of the worst weather on the planet, powered by a mix of century-old steam engines and modern biodiesel locomotives.

Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge, Colorado (1882)

Finally, a survivor straight out of the mining frontier. The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad was built in 1882 to haul silver and gold out of the San Juan Mountains, and it has run coal-fired steam trains ever since, never once switching to diesel on its signature route. Today it carries passengers along a heart-stopping ledge blasted into the cliffs some 400 feet above the Animas River gorge out of Durango, a near-perfectly preserved slice of the Old West that just happens to still run. From a four-mile heritage line in Amish country to this silver-rush steam train clinging to a Colorado cliff, America's oldest railroads are living history, still rolling nearly two centuries after the first tracks were laid.