<P> In 1826 Massachusetts incorporated the Granite Railway as a common freight carrier to primarily haul granite for the construction of the Bunker Hill Monument; operations began later that year . </P> <P> Other railroads authorized by states in 1826 and constructed in the following years included the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company's gravity railroad; and the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, to carry freight and passengers around a bend in the Erie Canal . To link the port of Baltimore to the Ohio River, the state of Maryland in 1827 chartered the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), the first section of which opened in 1830 . Similarly, the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company was chartered in 1827 to connect Charleston to the Savannah River, and Pennsylvania built the Main Line of Public Works between Philadelphia and the Ohio River . </P> <P> The Americans closely followed and copied British railroad technology . The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first common carrier and started passenger train service in May 1830, initially using horses to pull train cars . The South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company was the first to use steam locomotives regularly beginning with the Best Friend of Charleston, the first American - built locomotive intended for revenue service, in December 1830 . </P> <P> The B&O started developing steam locomotives in 1829 with Peter Cooper's Tom Thumb . This was the first American - built locomotive to run in the U.S., although it was intended as a demonstration of the potential of steam traction rather than as a revenue - earning locomotive . Many of the earliest locomotives for American railroads were imported from England, including the Stourbridge Lion and the John Bull, but a domestic locomotive manufacturing industry was quickly established, with locomotives like the DeWitt Clinton being built in the 1830s . The B&O's westward route reached the Ohio River in 1852, the first eastern seaboard railroad to do so . </P>

When did scheduled common carrier freight and passenger service begin in the u.s. ​