Railroad mileage of counties

From: A.Datta1@lse.ac.uk

I am a 3rd year student at the London School of Economics (LSE) in the UK studying Economics and Economic History.

This year I am going to do a dissertation on American economic history. I am going to study how the development of railroads (in terms of mileage) affected the growth of population of Midwestern states in America from 1860 to 1900.

For my study I am looking to get details of railroad mileage from 1860 to 1900 for the different counties in the state. I was wondering if this data was available and if it is, please could you send it to me or let me know how I could access it.

—Arnab Datta