Pennsylvania Railroad

Early History
Often called the "Pennsy", the Pennsylvania Railroad was founded in 1846. It was headquartered in Philadelphia. For the first half of the twentieth century, the Pennsy was the largest railroad by both revenue and traffic in the US. It had merged, owned or leased over 800 other railway lines. It ran on 10,515 miles of railway and carried almost three times as much traffic as other railroads of roughly the same size. It's closest rival, the New York Central carried only three-quarters of the "ton-miles" that the Pennsylvania carried. The PRR was an important financial force in the US, being the largest publicly traded corporation in the world. It's budget was larger than the entire government of the United States and it had a workforce of close to 250,000 people.