Railway oil transportation. 19th-century illustration of piping and railway tankers used to transport crude oil in the USA. One of the major oil booms was in Pennsylvania. From 1859 to the early 1870s, million of barrels of oil were produced, accounting for around a third of the world's oil production. Railroads expanded into Western Pennsylvania to ship the crude oil from the oil wells to the rest of the country. The oil was piped from the well-heads to the tanker carriages, as shown here. Artwork from 'Moteurs' (1911) by French civil engineer Max de Nansouty (1854-1913), part of the 'Les merveilles de la science' series of 1867-1891 by Louis Figuier.