Would expansion into the west have occurred at the same rate without the
railroads?

In the state of Hammurabi people were not treated in the same way, they were treated depending on the social category to which they belonged.

Explanation:

Hammurabi was the sixth king of Babylon and under his rule the state was governed by a set of civil and criminal laws and regulations known as Code of Hammurabi . This code was written in 1750 B. C. and its laws are numbered from 1 to 282.

One of the important aspects of this code is the establishment of the hierarchy of society in three groups:

1) Free men or awilum.

2) The muškenum, who are speculated could be servants or subordinates, or an intermediate category of "semi-free" men.

3) Slaves or wardum.

The second important aspect of this set of laws is based on the application of the Law of the Talion (also known as Eye for an eye): the rule imposed a punishment that was identified with the crime committed, obtaining reciprocity.

However, this reciprocity only applied between individuals of the same category, therefore in the state of King Hammurabi not all people were treated in the same way. As an example, some paraphrased extracts of the code are shown below:

-The doctors' fees vary depending on whether a free man or a slave was healed.

-If a free man emptied the eye of a son of another free man, his eye would be emptied in return and in case the aggressor was of a category superior to that of the victim, Law of Talion is not applied but is condemned to a pecuniary punishment. And if the eye of a slave of a free man was emptied, the agressor would pay half his price (the price of the slave).

In conclusion, in the state of Hammurabi people were not treated in the same way, they were treated depending on the social category to which they belonged.