Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1986), is the classic account of this.
See, e.g., A. N. Towne to CPH, Feb. 19, 1875, E. P. Vining to Sidney Dillon, Jan. 29, 1875, enclosed with preceding. See also J. C. Stubbs to Towne, Feb. 13, 1875, all in CPH Papers, ser. 1, r. 7.
E. P. Vining to J. C. Stubbs, Feb. 19, 1875, CPH Papers, ser. 1, r. 7.
Ripley, Railroads: Rates and Regulation, is the classic contemporary account of the making of rates.
Some 6.3 times as much freight moved within California by rail as was shipped outside in 1873, in 1883 4.6 pounds of goods still moved within California for every pound shipped out.
Thirty-Fourth Annual Report of the Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco . . . (San Francisco: C. A. Murdock, 1884), 41-42, see Chart D below or in the appendix.
The eighteen items were grains, beans, borax, canned fruit, dried fruit, green fruit, hops, hides/pelts, lumber, leather, mustard seed, quicksilver, salmon, sugar, tea, wine/brandy, and wool.
For shipment of canned goods by clipper ship, Testimony of W. R. Wheeler, Report of the Industrial Commission on Transportation, vol. 9, 754. See Graphs A, B, and C below or in the appendix.