<P> Congress added railroad worker safety laws throughout the 20th century . Significant among this legislation is the Federal Railroad Safety Act of 1970, which gave the FRA broad responsibilities over all aspects of rail safety, and expanded the agency's authority to cover all railroads, both interstate and intrastate . </P> <P> According to historian Henry Adams the system of railroads needed: </P> <Dl> <Dd> 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 . </Dd> </Dl> <Dd> 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 . </Dd>

Who built the railroads in the 19th century