for the travelers, but more elaborate time tables, called train orders, were even more essential for the train crews, the maintenance workers, the station personnel, and for the repair and maintenance crews, who knew when to expect a train would come along. Most trackage was single track, with sidings and signals to allow lower priority trains to be sidetracked. Schedules told everyone what to do, where to be, and exactly when. If bad weather disrupted the system, telegraphers relayed immediate corrections and updates throughout the system. Just as railways as business organizations created the standards and models for modern big business, so too the railway timetable was adapted to myriad uses, such as schedules for buses, ferries, and airplanes, for radio and television programs, for school schedules, for factory time clocks. The modern world was ruled by the clock and the timetable. Nation-building Scholars have linked railroads to successful nation-building efforts by states. Model of corporate management According to historian Henry Adams the system of railroads needed: the energies of a generation, for it required all the new machinery to be created capital, banks, mines, furnaces, shops, power-houses, technical knowledge, mechanical population, together with a steady remodelling of social and political habits, ideas, and institutions to fit the new scale and suit the new conditions. The generation between 1865 and 1895 was already mortgaged to the railways, and no one knew it better than the generation itself. The impact can be examined through five aspects: shipping, finance, management, careers, and popular reaction. Shipping freight and passengers First they provided a highly efficient network for shipping freight and passengers across a large national market. The result was a transforming impact on most sectors of the economy including manufacturing, retail and wholesale, agriculture, and finance. The United States now had an integrated national market practically the size of Europe, with no internal barriers or tariffs, all supported by a common language, and financial system and a common legal system. Basis of the private financial system Railroads financing provided the basis for a dramatic expansion of the private (non-governmental) financial system. Construction of railroads was far more expensive than factories. In 1860, the combined total of railroad stocks and bonds was $1.8 billion; 1897 it reached $10.6 billion (compared to a total national debt of $1.2 billion). Funding came from financiers throughout the Northeast, and from Europe, especially Britain. About 10 percent of