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 The railway station was the meeting place for all—greeting arrivals, farewells to those departing, and a good place to pick up the latest gossip by those who just came to watch.

The first Federal land grants for railroads were made to Illinois, Mississippi, and Alabama in 1850 and totaled 3,736,000 acres of land which the States transferred to the Illinois Central Railroad and the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. With these grants as a precedent, Congress in the period 1850 to 1871 aided some 50 other railroads by similar grants of public land to nine other southern and western States for

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