In the 19th century, the railways constituted the biggest business and were one of the crucial political issues that profoundly characterized the history of the entire century. Railroad companies, according to Alfred D. Chandler (1918–2007; Chandler 1965), were among the first major enterprises to appear on the world scene at the turn of the century.
The first Russian railway line, the 27km-long Tsarskoye Selo Railway, which connected the imperial palace at Tsarskoye Selo to Pavlovsk (Saint-Petersburg), was built in 1837 by Yefim Alekseyevich Cherepanov (1774–1842) and his son Miron Yefimovich Cherepanov (1803–1849). While the Tsarskoye Selo Railway did not have a measurable economic impact on the Russian Empire, the Warsaw-Vienna railway, inaugurated in 1845, significantly transformed the socio-economic scenario. 
The railroad network on the territories of modern Ukraine was developed by the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires and the railways soon became the main mode of transportation. The Ukrainian natural waterways, which flow north to south, were complemented by the land transportation provided by the railways from east to west.
With the building of the first railroad line in 1861, to connect L’viv (Leopolis) – currently in western Ukraine – to Krakow and Vienna, the cartographic representation of the country underwent a serious shift. However, a new mode of traveling was not established until the turn of the century.
Since the early years of their use, railway lines were the object of desire of politicians and capitalists, provoking both euphoria and distrust, however, gradually becoming commodities in a complicated relationship between the countries’ center and periphery. [VC]