Pontchartrain Rail-Road was the first railway in New Orleans, Louisiana. Chartered in 1830, the railroad began carrying people and goods between the Mississippi River front and Lake Pontchartrain on 23 April 1831. It closed more than a hundred years later.
The 6-mile (10 km) long 4 ft 8 in (1,422 mm) gauge[1] line connected the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans along the riverfront with the town of Milneburg on the Lakefront. When built, the majority of the distance of the route between neighborhoods at either end of the route was a mixture of farmland, woods, and swamp. The route of the railway ran down the center of Elysian Fields Avenue.
It was the third common carrier railroad to officially open for service to the public in the United States, following the Baltimore and Ohio and the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company.