I've been conducting a research project (ultimately geared towards a public history display) with some of my student coworkers, and we've run into the interesting bump where our attention has been turned toward the old railroad in town. After some digging around, I found out it was built in 1852, which from my survey courses on the American West I remember to be the point at which the United States went into railroad frenzy. Ideally, we would like to investigate the building of the railroad in this town as a microcosm of larger Midwestern America's shift from canals to trains as the primary method of transporting goods.

The issue is, we have no idea where to start when it comes to secondary sources on the topic. Would anybody be willing to recommend a few places to get started?