Postbellum
After his war service, Haupt returned to railroad, bridge, pipeline, and tunnel construction. He and his wife purchased a small resort hotel at Mountain Lake in Giles County, Virginia. He invented a drilling machine that won the highest prize of the Royal Polytechnic Society of Great Britain and was the first to prove the practicability of transporting oil in pipes.
He was the general manager of Piedmont Air-Line Railway (from Richmond, Virginia, to Atlanta, Georgia), 1872 to 1876; general manager of the Northern Pacific Railroad, 1881 to 1885; president of the Dakota and Great Southern Railroad, 1885 to 1886. He was a wealthy man from his investments in railroads, mining, and Pennsylvania real estate, but he eventually lost most of his fortune, in part due to political complications involving the completion of the Hoosac Tunnel.
Herman Haupt died of a heart attack at age 88 in Jersey City, New Jersey, stricken while traveling in a Pullman car named "Irma" on a journey from New York to Philadelphia. He is buried in West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. His son Lewis M. Haupt was a noted civil engineer.
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