No, it wasn't. For the most part of the nineteenth century, more and more people commuted on rails as opposed to steamboat i.e water. The effect of the locomotive cannot be over emphasized. Try to envision the nineteenth century without the smoke-belching engines along endless expanses of iron track. The locomotive was the driving force behind America’s western expansion, and it played a major role in the Civil. It would be impossible to visualize the nineteenth century without the locomotive.
