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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One reason is that trains have their own infrastructure and support needs.
Steam locomotives: You need water replenishment, fuel replenishment, engine maintenance. This means workers, and workers need housing.
Cargo: most cargo was moved by rail. This means a storage depot for each station, cranes, and of course workers to man all of those.
Postal: yes postal service was train based so each station serves as a postal hub. This requires workers too.
Result: a small town station is already feeding 5-10 families.
On top of this, most trade offices will move next to the train station to have a quicker access and therefore better revenues and more customers.
This will feed some 2-5 families.
Now, it seems little but adding 10-20 families to a town, is huge. Comparatively, that’s 10-20 farms equivalent of wealth and people.
Then there’s industry that will build as close as possible to rail, this will move 10-100 families from the farms to the town.
Factoring in the people that can thrive by selling services to those families, a station can grow a farmer’s town from 500 to 1000 people. And this is in the very short term.
Then the industry will require a school, then the place become a good source of skilled workers, more industry comes and the town snowballs. While the towns without railway access keep losing population as their citizens are carried away by the more interesting opportunities of the railway town.
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