I’m studying geography and can’t quite grasp the correlation between railtracks and the creation of cities. I get that railtracks can transport natural resources, but I don’t see the connection.
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Railtracks aid in transporting natural resources and make it easier in general to transport stuff from or to the city. Natural resources such as wood, water and stones can be used to build the city. mhmmmmmm
Lets start longer ago, Citys have been build along Rivers or next to the oceans. Simply because it was far easier to transport stuff this way.
Then with existent Citys Railroads have been build from city to city.
Then since there was a transport option new citys have been build along the railroads.
That was Europe
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In America, well i am no historican, but i think that the Railway from East to west coast was necessary to transport the build material. And after the railway have been build it happened the same as in europe, and new Citys along the railroad made sense.
You already have the core of it in your own question so why don’t you just extrapolate a bit. What is a railroad? It’s transportation infrastructure. What does transportation infrastructure do? It moves resources (as you pointed out) and *people.* What do cities need to grow? Resources and people. Places that were once remote were now readily and easily accessible by rail. When you have people and things passing along that route, that route is going to become a hub, or in other words, a city.
Also, for what its worth, steam trains needed stopping points to take on water and fuel. Towns would have sprung up around these stopping points.
You’ll probably want to ask a slightly more specific version of this, because the situation in the “new world” is almost entirely inverted from the “old world”.