Moving people or things from place to place in Pathfinder 1899 takes much longer than people living in contemporary American society would imagine. In the USA, rail lines link all the major cities with fuel and water depot stops spaced out so that the trains' engines don't break down; mail delivery stations coincide with the food and fuel storage facilities. It would take a week or more to go from California to Maine via railroad, and if the destination isn't near a big city the travelers would have to switch to stage coaches or horseback to get somewhere more obscure. Inside the various large cities, trolleys, trains or subways move people around while horse-drawn wagons deliver goods like food, coal, consumer goods or ice blocks (home refrigeration is the province of literal ice boxes at this point). Sanitation crews sweep up the mountains of horse shit in the streets, generally in the richer and more prosperous neighborhoods although some attempt is made to clear out the poorer neighborhoods from time to time (not least because animal feces can be used in tanning leather or in making crop fertilizer, and so much of it is lying around free for the taking).
Cities, incidentally, tend to have a patchwork of gas lighting and electricity, with homes heated individually by coal rather than the piped-in gas heating that everyone playing the game would be familiar with. Industrial regulations do not exist; factories can belch smoke and shit chemicals into the air, water and soil with impunity. Want to know what that genuinely looks like? Here you go. Since this is fantasy, there's less smog and chemical foulness in the atmosphere of the larger cities. Since it's fantasy, alchemical pollution can be even more dangerous than the ordinary chemical kind. The rural areas get by with horses for plowing fields or drawing carts for the most part. Roads in and around the main cities are paved with tarmacadam, while the more distant streets tend to be gravel or dirt, though generally kept in good repair.
Airships are also in use, a luxurious way to view the countryside from thousands of feet up. Goods are also shipped by sea and people travel across the oceans on massive liners as well.
Rail lines terminate at the edge of the territory controlled by the 500 Nations; the tribes do not allow heavy industry in their lands. This led to the creation of border towns full of warehouses and shops all over the edge of the Nations' territory; anything people want can be found at these hypercapitalist boom towns...for a price. Similarly, the Native Americans living near those artificially developed cities make a fine living selling fresh meat, spring water or handicrafts to the merchants (who sell them to other people in the USA, taking a cut off the marked-up prices themselves). That far out from the huge cities and smaller towns, criminal gangs tend to gravitate thanks to the promise of easy money and distant governmental forces.
Deseret has miles of railroad lines from when it was part of the USA, but most of their transportation infrastructure is deteriorating for lack of skilled maintenance and industrial facilities capable of rolling out quality steel rails. Horse-drawn wagons and carts make up the bulk of transportation for goods while stagecoaches or horses provide the way for people to get around from place to place.
Tejas, as well, tends to depend on horse-drawn transportation (though the use of refined crude oil as a fuel for mechanical transports shows a great deal of promise for the near future). Some of the existing railways in Tejas have been adapted so that train cars are pulled by teams of horses or mules; the unused engines have been torn down for scrap or sold to Peachtree, the USA or CSA (depending on whether or not it was feasible to move them). Most of the roads in Tejas and Deseret are gravel or dirt rather than paved (and a vast amount of open country exists in both countries).
Peachtree has undergone a massive project to link its major cities with Electric Railways; the smaller towns have spur lines leading to them as well. The Railways are subsidized by nationwide taxes and no charge is assessed for their use; George Washington Carver declared that they are a public good and will be financed by public funds. Shipping into Peachtree is monitored by Engine-using police who watch for sabotage (the CSA is a constant threat on that score). Exports from Peachtree are also closely monitored to prevent advanced technologies from falling into that nation's enemies (and, occasionally, its allies). Like the USA (and the remaining lines in Deseret), Peachtree's railways have a standardized gauge, with the rails always a standard distance apart and the ties made of the same lumber over every mile of track.
The CSA, however, never developed an industrial culture like the United States did. Its country-spanning railroads vary gauge and construction materials state by state or even county by county; individual small railroads worked together or against each other in various places and the nation is covered by a crazy quilt of different rail lines. Switching from one to another is a relatively brief matter for passengers and luggage, but for shipping cargo it's a laborious and time-consuming process. It's been known to take longer for a train to get from Florida to Arkansas than from California to Boston under the worst conditions. Repair and maintenance of the rails and engines is also a patchwork affair, with the poorer lines deteriorating faster than the richer ones and getting restored more slowly. The dirt and gravel roads in the Confederacy are in generally poor repair, while the paved ones are in conditions that range from horrible to impassable thanks to fourteen years of warfare and an impoverished nation that cannot afford to fix them. The ports of New Orleans remain a bustling commercial enterprise, and there is a zeppelin port in Oklahoma that mostly serves as a depot and refueling stop for American and Tejano airships (but does also handle the vast majority of Confederate airships). Nearly all travel and transport in the CSA requires horseback riding; the poorest people walk or simply don't go anywhere else.
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