First transcontinental railroad

 ( 1860s In California ) 

Durant manipulated market prices on his stocks by spreading rumors about which railroads he had an interest in were being considered for connection with the Union Pacific. First he touted rumors that his fledgling M&M Railroad had a deal in the works, while secretly buying stock in the depressed Cedar Rapids and Missouri Railroad. Then he circulated rumors that the CR&M had plans to connect to the Union Pacific, at which point he began buying back the M&M stock at depressed prices. It is estimated his scams produced over $5 million in profits for him and his cohorts.

Before major construction could begin, Judah traveled back to New York City to raise funds to buy out The Big Four. Shortly after arriving in New York, Judah died on November 2, 1863, of yellow fever that he had contracted while traveling over the Panama Railroad's transit of the Isthmus of Panama. The CPRR Engineering Department was taken over by his successor Samuel S. Montegue, as well as Canadian trained Chief Assistant Engineer (later Acting Chief Engineer) Lewis Metzler Clement who also became Superintendent of Track.

It was far from a given that the railroads operating in the thinly-settled west would make enough money to repay their construction and operation. If the railroad companies failed to sell the land granted them within three years, they were required to sell it at prevailing government price for homesteads: . If they failed to repay the bonds, all remaining railroad property, including trains and tracks, would revert to the U.S. government. To encourage settlement in the west, Congress (1861–1863) passed the Homestead Acts which granted an applicant of land with the requirement that the applicant improve the land. This incentive encouraged thousands of settlers to move west.

In return for the land grants, the railroads were required to haul government personnel and cargo at significantly reduced rates (generally half of the normal rate). In addition, the land was granted in a checkerboard fashion, with the government retaining every other section. The land that the government retained typically doubled in value as a result of the railroad being built. The land grants were a good deal for the government.Holbrook, Stewart H. The Story of American Railroads, pp. 156-7, 161-2, Bonanza Books, New York, New York, 1947.Locklin, D. Philip. Economics of Transportation, pp. 134, 136-7, Richard D. Irwin, Inc., Homewood, Illinois, 1972.

The government guaranteed loans to several Pacific railroads, which were all paid off by 1899 ($63 million in principal, and $105 million in interest). After receiving rate discounts of approximately 50% on government personnel and cargo for 80 years (including during two world wars), Congress finally discontinued the rate reductions at the end of World War II. The land grants had been more than paid for (several times over).Holbrook, Stewart H. The Story of American Railroads, pp. 156-7, 161-2, Bonanza Books, New York, New York, 1947.Locklin, D. Philip. Economics of Transportation, pp. 134, 136-7, Richard D. Irwin, Inc., Homewood, Illinois, 1972.

Located from Evans pass, Union Pacific connected the new "railroad" town of Cheyenne to Denver and its Denver Pacific Railway and Telegraph Company railroad line in 1870. Elevated above sea level, and sitting on the new Union Pacific route with a connection to Denver, Cheyenne was chosen to become a major railroad center and was equipped with extensive railroad yards, maintenance facilities, and a Union Pacific presence. Its location made it a good base for Bank engine to couple to trains with to help clear the tracks of snow or help haul heavy freight over Evans pass. The Union Pacific's junction with the Denver Railroad with its connection to Kansas City, Kansas, Kansas City, Missouri, and the railroads east of the Missouri River again increased Cheyenne's importance as the junction of two major railroads. Cheyenne later became Wyoming's largest city and the capital of the new state of Wyoming.

The railroad established many townships along the way: Fremont, Elkhorn, Grand Island, North Platte, Ogallala and Sidney as the railroad followed the Platte River across Nebraska territory. The railroad even dipped into what would become the new state of Colorado after crossing the North Platte River as it followed the South Platte River west into what would become Julesburg before turning northwest along Lodgepole Creek into Wyoming. In the Dakota Territory (Wyoming) the new towns of Cheyenne, Laramie, Rawlins (named for Union Army General John Aaron Rawlins, who camped in the locality in 1867Stewart, George R. (1970) American Place-Names, p. 401, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.), Green River and Evanston (named after James Evans) were established, as well as much more fuel and water stops. The Green River was crossed with a new bridge, and the new "railroad" town of Green River constructed there after the tracks reached the Green River on October 1, 1868—the last big river to cross.

On December 4, 1868, the Union Pacific reached Evanston, having laid almost of track over the Green River and the Laramie Plains that year. By 1871, Evanston became a significant maintenance shop town equipped to carry out extensive repairs on the cars and steam locomotives.

In the Utah Territory, the railroad once again diverted from the main emigrant trails to cross the Wasatch Range and went down the rugged Echo Canyon (Summit County, Utah) and Weber River canyon. To speed up construction as much as possible, Union Pacific contracted several thousand Mormon workers to cut, fill, trestle, bridge, blast and tunnel its way down the rugged Weber River Canyon to Ogden, Utah, ahead of the railroad construction. The Mormon and Union Pacific rail work was joined in the area of the present-day border between Utah and Wyoming.Mormon workers on Union Pacific transcontinental tracks [19] accessed August 2, 2013. The longest of four tunnels built in Weber Canyon was Tunnel 2. Work on this tunnel started in October 1868 and was completed six months later. Temporary tracks were laid around it and Tunnels 3 (), 4 () and 5 () to continue work on the tracks west of the tunnels.

The tunnels were all made with the new dangerous nitroglycerine explosive, which expedited work but caused some fatal accidents.Construction on Echo and Weber Canyon [20] accessed March 15, 2013. While building the railroad along the rugged Weber River Canyon, Mormon workers signed the Thousand Mile Tree which was a lone tree alongside the track from Omaha. A historic marker has been placed there.

The tracks reached Ogden, Utah, on March 8, 1869,Deseret News March 17, 1869, page 1 although finishing work would continue on the tracks, tunnels and bridges in Weber Canyon for over a year. From Ogden, the railroad went north of the Great Salt Lake to Brigham City and Corinne using Mormon workers, before finally connecting with the Central Pacific Railroad at Promontory Summit in Utah territory on May 10, 1869.Promontory Summit-NPS [21] accessed February 26, 2013. Some Union Pacific officers declined to pay the Mormons all of the agreed upon construction costs of the work through Weber Canyon, and beyond, claiming Union Pacific poverty despite the millions they had extracted through the Crédit Mobilier of America scandal. Only partial payment was secured through court actions against Union Pacific.

In June 1864, the Central Pacific railroad entrepreneurs opened Dutch Flat and Donner Lake Wagon Road (DFDLWR).Dutch Flat and Donner Lake Wagon Road [23] Accessed July 23, 2009. Costing about $300,000 and a years worth of work, this toll road wagon route was opened over much of the route the Central Pacific railroad (CPRR) would use over Donner Summit to carry freight and passengers needed by the CPRR and to carry other cargo over their toll road to and from the ever-advancing railhead and over the Sierra to the gold and silver mining towns of Nevada. As the railroad advanced, their freight rates with the combined rail and wagon shipments would become much more competitive. The volume of the toll road freight traffic to Nevada was estimated to be about $13,000,000 a year as the Comstock Lode boomed, and getting even part of this freight traffic would help pay for the railroad construction. When the railroad reached Reno, it had the majority of all Nevada freight shipments, and the price of goods in Nevada dropped significantly as the freight charges to Nevada dropped significantly. The rail route over the Sierras followed the general route of the Truckee branch of the California Trail, going east over Donner Pass and down the rugged Truckee River valley.

The route over the Sierra had been plotted out by Judah in preliminary surveys before his death in 1863. Judah's deputy, Samuel S. Montague was appointed as Central Pacific's new Chief Engineer, with Lewis M. Clement as Assistant Chief Engineer and Charles Cadwalader as second assistant. To build the new railroad, detailed surveys had to be run that showed where the cuts, fills, trestles, bridges and tunnels would have to be built. Work that was identified as taking a long time was started as soon as its projected track location could be ascertained and work crews, supplies and road work equipment found to be sent ahead. Tunnels, trestles and bridges were nearly all built this way. The spread-out nature of the work resulted in the work being split into two divisions, with L. M. Clement taking the upper division from Blue Cañon to Truckee and Cadwalader taking the lower division from Truckee to the Nevada border. Other assistant engineers were assigned to specific tasks such as building a bridge, tunnel or trestle which was done by the workers under experienced supervisors.

In total, the Central Pacific had eleven tunnel projects (Nos. 3 through 13) under construction in the Sierra from 1865 to 1868, with seven tunnels located in a stretch on the east side of Donner Summit. The tunnels were usually built by drilling a series of holes in the tunnel face, filling them with black powder and detonating it to break the rock free. The black powder was provided by the California Powder Works near Santa Cruz, California. These works had started production in 1864 after the American Civil War had cut off shipments of black powder from the East to the mining and railroad industry of California and Nevada. The Central Pacific was a prolific user of black powder, often using up to 500 kegs of per day.California Powder Works [24] accessed March 19, 2013.

The summit tunnel (Number 6), , was started in late 1865, well ahead of the railhead. Through solid granite, the summit tunnel progressed at a rate of only about per day per face as it was being worked by three eight-hour shifts of workers, hand drilling holes with a rock drill and hammer, filling them with black powder and trying to blast the granite loose. One crew worked drilling holes on the faces and another crew collected and removed the loosened rock after each explosion. The workers were pulled off the summit tunnel and the track grading east of Donner Pass in the winter of 1865–1866 as there was no way to supply them, nor quarters they could have lived in. The crews were transferred to work on bridges and track grading on the Truckee River canyon.

In 1866, they put in a vertical shaft in the center of the summit tunnel and started work towards the east and west tunnel faces, giving four working faces on the summit tunnel to speed up progress. A steam engine off an old locomotive was brought up with much effort over the wagon road and used as a winch driver to help remove loosened rock from the vertical shaft and two working faces. By the winter of 1866–67, work had progressed sufficiently and a camp had been built for workers on the summit tunnel which allowed work to continue. The cross section of a tunnel face was a , oval with an vertical wall. Progress on the tunnel sped up to over per day per face when they started using the newly invented nitroglycerin—manufactured near the tunnel. They used nitroglycerin to deepen the summit tunnel to the required height after the four tunnel faces met, and made even faster progress. Nearly all other tunnels were worked on both tunnel faces and met in the middle. Depending on the material the tunnels penetrated, they were left unlined or lined with brick, rock walls or timber and post. Some tunnels were designed to bend in the middle to align with the track bed curvature. Despite this potential complication, nearly all the different tunnel center lines met within or so. The detailed survey work that made these tunnel digs as precise as required was nearly all done by the Canadian-born and -trained Lewis Clement, the CPRR's Chief Assistant Engineer and Superintendent of Track, and his assistants.Cooper, Bruce C. Lewis Metzler Clement: A Pioneer of the Central Pacific Railroad The Central Pacific Photographic History Museum.

Hills or ridges in front of the railroad road bed would have to have a flat-bottomed, V-shaped "cut" made to get the railroad through the ridge or hill. The type of material determined the slope of the V and how much material would have to be removed. Ideally, these cuts would be matched with valley fills that could use the dug out material to bring the road bed up to grade—cut and fill construction. In the 1860s there was no heavy equipment that could be used to make these cuts or haul it away to make the fills. The options were to dig it out by pick and shovel, haul the hillside material by wheelbarrow and/or horse or mule cart or blast it loose. To blast a V-shaped cut out, they had to drill several holes up to deep in the material, fill them with black powder, and blast the material away. Since the Central Pacific was in a hurry, they were profligate users of black powder to blast their way through the hills. The only disadvantage came when a nearby valley needed fill to get across it. The explosive technique often blew most of the potential fill material down the hillside, making it unavailable for fill.The Use of Black Powder and Nitroglycerine on the transcontinental railroad [26] accessed March 19, 2013.California Newspapers, 1865–66 [27] accessed March 19, 2013. Initially, many valleys were bridged by "temporary" trestles that could be rapidly built and were later replaced by much lower maintenance and permanent solid fill. The existing railroad made transporting and putting material in valleys much easier—load it on railway dump cars, haul where needed and dump it over the side of the trestle.

The route down the eastern Sierras was done on the south side of Donner Lake with a series of switchbacks carved into the mountain. The Truckee River, which drains Lake Tahoe, had already found and scoured out the best route across the Carson Range of mountains east of the Sierras. The route down the rugged Truckee River Canyon, including required bridges, was done ahead of the main summit tunnel completion. To expedite the building of the railroad through the Truckee River canyon, the Central Pacific hauled two small locomotives, , rails and other material on wagons and sleighs to what is now Truckee, California, and worked the winter of 1867–68 on their way down Truckee canyon ahead of the tracks being completed to Truckee. This feat was dramatized in John Ford's film The Iron Horse with one of Central Pacific's actual locomotives, C.P. Huntington." S.P. Aids Filming of Big Pictures", Southern Pacific Bulletin, Vol. XIV, No. 1. January 1925. Southern Pacific Company, 1924. 17. In Truckee canyon, five Howe truss bridges had to be built. This gave them a head start on getting to the "easy" miles across Nevada.

In order to keep the higher portions of the Sierra grade open in the winter, of timber were built between Blue Cañon and Truckee in addition to utilizing pushed by locomotives, as well as manual shovelling. With the advent of more efficient oil fired steam and later diesel electric power to drive plows, flangers, spreaders, and rotary snow plows, most of the wooden snowsheds have long since been removed as obsolete. Tunnels 1–5 and Tunnel 13 of the original 1860s tunnels on Track 1 of the Sierra grade remain in use today, while additional new tunnels were later driven when the grade was double tracked over the first quarter of the twentieth century. In 1993, the Southern Pacific Railroad (which operated the CPRR-built Oakland–Ogden line until its 1996 merger with the Union Pacific) closed and pulled up the section of Track #1 over the summit running between the Norden complex (Shed 26, MP 192.1)Norden at and the covered crossovers in Shed #47 (MP 198.8)Shed 47 visible at about a mile east of the old Flying junction at Eder, bypassing and abandoning the tunnel 6–8 complex, the concrete snowsheds just beyond them, and tunnels 9–12 ending at MP 195.7, all of which had been located on Track 1 within two miles of the summit.East end of Tunnel 41 at with former track 1 passing above. Since then all east- and westbound traffic has been run over the Track #2 grade crossing the summit about south of Donner Pass through the Tunnel #41 ("The Big Hole") running under Mt. Judah between Soda Springs and Eder, which was opened in 1925 when the summit section of the grade was double tracked. This routing change was made because the Track 2 and Tunnel 41 Summit crossing is far easier and less expensive to maintain and keep open in the harsh Sierra winters.

On June 18, 1868, the Central Pacific reached Reno, Nevada, after completing of railroad up and over the Sierras from Sacramento, California. By then the railroad had already been prebuilt down the Truckee River on the much flatter land from Reno to Wadsworth, Nevada, where they bridged the Truckee for the last time. From there, they struggled across a Lahontan Valley to the end of the Humboldt river at the Humboldt Sink. From the end of the Humboldt, they continued east over the Great Basin Desert bordering the Humboldt River to Wells, Nevada. One of the most troublesome problems found on this route along the Humboldt was at Palisade Canyon (near Carlin, Nevada), where for the line had to be built between the river and basalt cliffs. From Wells, Nevada, to Promontory Summit, the Railroad left the Humboldt and proceeded across the Nevada and Utah desert. Water for the was provided by wells, springs, or pipelines to nearby water sources. Water was often pumped into the water tanks with . Train fuel and for the early trains with steam locomotives may have been as often as every . On one memorable occasion, not far from Promontory, the Central Pacific crews organized an army of workers and five train loads of construction material, and laid of track on a prepared rail bed in one day—a record that still stands today. The Central Pacific and Union Pacific raced to get as much track laid as possible, and the Central Pacific laid about of track from Reno to Promontory Summit in the one year before the Last Spike was driven on May 10, 1869.

Central Pacific had 1,694 freight cars available by May 1869, with more under construction in their Sacramento yard. Major repairs and maintenance on the Central Pacific rolling stock was done in their Sacramento maintenance yard. Near the end of 1869, Central Pacific had 162 locomotives, of which 2 had two drivers (drive wheels), 110 had four drivers, and 50 had six drivers. The had been purchased in the eastern states and shipped to California by sea. Thirty-six additional locomotives were built and coming west, and twenty-eight more were under construction. There was a shortage of passenger cars and more had to be ordered. The first Central Pacific sleeper, the "Silver Palace Sleeping Car", arrived at Sacramento on June 8, 1868.Constructing the Central Pacific Railroad [29] accessed March 13, 2013.

The CPRR route passed through Newcastle and Truckee in California, Reno, Wadsworth, Winnemucca, Battle Mountain, Elko and Wells in Nevada (with many more fuel and water stops), before connecting with the Union Pacific line at Promontory Summit in the Utah Territory. When the eastern end of the CPRR was extended to Ogden by purchasing the Union Pacific Railroad line from Promontory for about $2.8 million in 1870, it ended the short period of a boom town for Promontory, extended the Central Pacific tracks about and made Ogden a major terminus on the transcontinental railroad, as passengers and freight switched railroads there.

Subsequent to the railhead's meeting at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, the San Joaquin River Bridge at Mossdale Crossing (near present-day Lathrop, California) was completed on September 8, 1869, with the first through freight train carrying freight from the East Coast leaving Sacramento and crossing the bridge to arrive that evening at the Alameda Wharf on San Francisco Bay. As a result, the western part of the route was extended from Sacramento to the Alameda Terminal in Alameda, California, and shortly thereafter, to the Oakland Pier at Oakland Point in Oakland, California, and on to San Jose, California. Train ferries transferred some railroad cars to and from the Oakland wharves and tracks to wharves and tracks in San Francisco. Before the CPRR was completed, developers were building other feeder railroads like the Virginia and Truckee Railroad to the Comstock Lode diggings in Virginia City, Nevada, and several different extensions in California and Nevada to reach other cities there. Some of their main cargo was the thousands of cords ( each) of firewood needed for the many steam engines and pumps, cooking stoves, heating stoves etc. in Comstock Lode towns and the tons of ice needed by the miners as they worked ever deeper into the "hot" Comstock Lode ore body. In the mines, temperatures could get above at the work face and a miner often used over of ice per shift. This new railroad connected to the Central Pacific near Reno, and went through Carson City, the new capital of Nevada.

After the transcontinental railroads were completed, many other railroads were built to connect up to other population centers in Utah, Wyoming, Kansas, Colorado, Oregon, Washington territories, etc. In 1869, the Kansas Pacific Railway started building the Hannibal Bridge, a swing bridge across the Missouri River between Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas, which connected railroads on both sides of the Missouri while still allowing passage of on the river. After completion, this became another major east–west railroad. To speed completion of the Kansas Pacific Railroad to Denver, construction started east from Denver in March 1870 to meet the railroad coming west from Kansas city. The two crews met at a point called Comanche Crossing, Kansas, on August 15, 1870. Denver was now firmly on track to becoming the largest city and the future capital of Colorado. The Kansas Pacific Railroad linked with the Denver Pacific Railway via Denver to Cheyenne in 1870.

The original transcontinental railroad route did not pass through the two biggest cities in the so-called Great American Desert—Denver, Colorado, and Salt Lake City, Utah. Feeder railroad lines were soon built to service these two and other cities and states along the route.

Modern-day Interstate 80 roughly follows the path of the railroad from Sacramento across modern day California, Nevada, Wyoming and Nebraska, with a few exceptions. Most significantly, the two routes are different between Wells, Nevada, and Echo, Utah. In this area the freeway passes along the south shore of the Great Salt Lake and passes through Salt Lake City, cresting the Wasatch Mountains at Parley's Summit. The railroad was originally routed along the north shore, and later with the Lucin Cutoff directly across the center of the Great Salt Lake, passing through the city of Ogden instead of Salt Lake City. The railroad crosses the Wasatch Mountains via a much gentler grade through Weber Canyon. Most of the other deviations are in mountainous areas where interstate highways allow for grades up to six-percent grades, which allows them to go many places the railroads had to go around, since their goal was to hold their grades to less than two percent.

Survey teams were put out to produce detailed contour maps of the options on the different routes. The engineering team looked at the available surveys and chose what was the "best" route. Survey teams under the direction of the engineers closely led the work crews and marked where and by how much hills would have to be cut and depressions filled or bridged. Coordinators made sure that construction and other supplies were provided when and where needed, and additional supplies were ordered as the railroad construction consumed the supplies. Specialized bridging, explosive and tunneling teams were assigned to their specialized jobs. Some jobs like explosive work, tunneling, bridging, heavy cuts or fills were known to take longer than others, so the specialized teams were sent out ahead by wagon trains with the supplies and men to get these jobs done by the time the regular track-laying crews arrived. Finance officers made sure the supplies were paid for and men paid for their work. An army of men had to be coordinated and a seemingly never-ending chain of supplies had to be provided. The Central Pacific road crew set a track-laying record by laying of track in a single day, commemorating the event with a signpost beside the track for passing trains to see.

In addition to the track-laying crews, other crews were busy setting up stations with provisions for loading fuel, water and often also mail, passengers and freight. Personnel had to be hired to run these stations. Maintenance depots had to be built to keep all of the equipment repaired and operational. Telegraph operators had to be hired to man each station to keep track of where the trains were so that trains could run in each direction on the available single track without interference or accidents. Sidings had to be built to allow trains to pass. Provision had to be made to store and continually pay for coal or wood needed to run the . Water towers had to be built for refilling the water tanks on the engines, and provision made to keep them full.

The manual labor to build the Central Pacific's roadbed, bridges and tunnels was done primarily by many thousands of emigrant workers from China under the direction of skilled non-Chinese supervisors. The Chinese were commonly referred to at the time as "Celestial Empire" and China as the "Celestial Kingdom". Labor-saving devices in those days consisted primarily of , horse or mule pulled carts, and a few railroad pulled gondolas. The construction work involved an immense amount of manual labor. Initially, Central Pacific had a hard time hiring and keeping unskilled workers on its line, as many would leave for the prospect of far more lucrative gold or silver mining options elsewhere. Despite the concerns expressed by Charles Crocker, one of the "big four" and a general contractor, that the Chinese were too small in statureAmbrose, p. 148. and lacking previous experience with railroad work, they decided to try them anyway. After the first few days of trial with a few workers, with noticeably positive results, Crocker decided to hire as many as he could, looking primarily at the California labor force, where the majority of Chinese worked as independent gold miners or in the service industries (e.g.: laundries and kitchens). Most of these Chinese workers were represented by a Chinese "boss" who translated, collected salaries for his crew, kept discipline and relayed orders from an American general supervisor. Most Chinese workers spoke only rudimentary or no English, and the supervisors typically only learned rudimentary Chinese. Many more workers were imported from the Guangdong Province of China, which at the time, beside great poverty, suffered from the violence of the Taiping Rebellion. Most Chinese workers were planning on returning with their newfound "wealth" when the work was completed. Most of the men received between one and three dollars per day, the same as unskilled white workers; but the workers imported directly from China sometimes received less. A diligent worker could save over $20 per month after paying for food and lodging—a "fortune" by Chinese standards. A snapshot of workers in late 1865 showed about 3,000 Chinese and 1,700 white workers employed on the railroad. Nearly all of the white workers were in supervisory or skilled craft positions and made more money than the Chinese.

Most of the early work on the Central Pacific consisted of constructing the railroad track bed, cutting and/or blasting through or around hills, filling in washes, building bridges or trestles, digging and blasting tunnels and then laying the rails over the Sierra Nevada mountains. Once the Central Pacific was out of the Sierras and the Carson Range, progress sped up considerably as the railroad bed could be built over nearly flat ground. In those days, the Central Pacific once did a section of of track in one day as a "demonstration" of what they could do on flat ground like most of the Union Pacific had in Wyoming and Nebraska.

The track laying was divided up into various parts. In advance of the track layers, surveyors consulting with engineers determined where the track would go. Workers then built and prepared the roadbed, dug or blasted through hills, filled in washes, built trestles, bridges or culverts across streams or valleys, made tunnels if needed, and laid the ties. The actual track-laying gang would then lay rails on the previously laid ties positioned on the roadbed, drive the spikes, and bolt the fishplate bars to each rail. At the same time, another gang would distribute telegraph poles and wire along the grade, while the cooks prepared dinner and the clerks busied themselves with accounts, records, using the telegraph line to relay requests for more materials and supplies or communicate with supervisors. Usually the workers lived in camps built near their work site. Supplies were ordered by the engineers and hauled by rail, possibly then to be loaded on wagons if they were needed ahead of the railhead. Camps were moved when the railhead moved a significant distance. Later, as the railroad started moving long distances every few days, some railroad cars had built in them that moved with the workers—the Union Pacific had used this technique since 1866. Almost all of the roadbed work had to be done manually, using shovels, picks, axes, two-wheeled dump carts, wheelbarrows, ropes, scrapers, etc., with initially only black powder available for blasting. Carts pulled by mules, and horses were about the only labor-saving devices available then. Lumber and ties were usually provided by independent contractors who cut, hauled and sawed the timber as required.

Tunnels were blasted through hard rock by drilling holes in the rock face by hand and filling them with black powder. Sometimes cracks were found which could be filled with powder and blasted loose. The loosened rock would be collected and hauled out of the tunnel for use in a fill area or as roadbed, or else dumped over the side as waste. A foot or so advance on a tunnel face was a typical day's work. Some tunnels took almost a year to finish and the Summit Tunnel, the longest, took almost two years. In the final days of working in the Sierras, the recently invented nitroglycerin explosive was introduced and used on the last tunnels including Summit Tunnel.

Supply trains carried all the necessary material for the construction up to the railhead, with mule or horse-drawn wagons carrying it the rest of the ways if required. Ties were typically unloaded from horse-drawn or mule-drawn wagons and then placed on the track ballast and leveled to get ready for the rails. Rails, which weighed the most, were often kicked off the flatcars and carried by gangs of men on each side of the rail to where needed. The rails just in front of the rail car would be placed first, measured for the correct gauge with gauge sticks and then nailed down on the ties with . The fishplates connecting the ends of the rails would be bolted on and then the car pushed by hand to the end of the rail and rail installation repeated.

Track ballast was put between the ties as they progressed. Where a proper railbed had already been prepared, the work progressed rapidly. Constantly needed supplies included "food, water, ties, rails, spikes, fishplates, nuts and bolts, track ballast, telegraph poles, wire, firewood (or coal on the Union Pacific) and water for the steam train locomotives, etc." After a flatcar was unloaded, it would usually be hooked to a small locomotive and pulled back to a siding, so another flatcar with rails etc. could be advanced to the railhead. Since juggling railroad cars took time on flat ground, where wagon transport was easier, the rail cars would be brought to the end of the line by steam locomotive, unloaded, and the flat car returned immediately to a siding for another loaded car of either ballast or rails. Temporary sidings were often installed where it could be easily done to expedite getting needed supplies to the railhead.

The railroad tracks, spikes, telegraph wire, locomotives, railroad cars, supplies etc. were imported from the east on sailing ships that sailed the nearly , 200-day trip around Cape Horn. Some freight was put on which could do the trip in about 120 days. Some passengers and high-priority freight were shipped over the newly completed (as of 1855) Panama Railroad across the Isthmus of Panama. Using to and from Panama, this shortcut could be traveled in as little as 40 days. Supplies were normally offloaded at the Sacramento, California, docks where the railroad started.

The first step of construction was to survey the route and determine the locations where large excavations, tunnels and bridges would be needed. Crews could then start work in advance of the railroad reaching these locations. Supplies and workers were brought up to the work locations by wagon teams and work on several different sections proceeded simultaneously. One advantage of working on tunnels in winter was that tunnel work could often proceed since the work was nearly all "inside". Living quarters would have to be built outside and getting new supplies was difficult. Working and living in winter in the presence of snow slides and avalanches caused some deaths.Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World, pp. 160, 201.

To carve a tunnel, one worker held a rock drill on the granite face while one to two other workers swung eighteen-pound sledgehammers to sequentially hit the drill which slowly advanced into the rock. Once the hole was about deep, it would be filled with black powder, a fuse set and then ignited from a safe distance. Nitroglycerin, which had been invented less than two decades before the construction of the first transcontinental railroad, was used in relatively large quantities during its construction. This was especially true on the Central Pacific Railroad, which owned its own nitroglycerin plant to ensure it had a steady supply of the volatile explosive.Howard, Robert The Great Iron Trail. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1962. pg. 222 This plant was operated by Chinese laborers as they were willing workers even under the most trying and dangerous of conditions.Howard, Robert The Great Iron Trail. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1962. pg.222

Chinese laborers were also crucial in the construction of 15 tunnels along the railroad's line through the Sierra Nevada mountains. These were about high and wide.Tzu-Kuei, "Chinese Workers and the First Transcontinental Railroad of the United States of America", p. 128. When tunnels with vertical shafts were dug to increase construction speed, tunneling began in the middle of the tunnel and at both ends simultaneously. At first hand-powered were used to help remove loose rocks up the vertical shafts. These derricks were later replaced with steam hoists as work progressed. By using vertical shafts, four faces of the tunnel could be worked at the same time, two in the middle and one at each end. The average daily progress in some tunnels was only a day per face, which was very slow, or daily according to historian George Kraus. J. O. Wilder, a Central Pacific-Southern Pacific employee, commented that "The Chinese were as steady, hard-working a set of men as could be found. With the exception of a few whites at the west end of Tunnel No. 6, the laboring force was entirely composed of Chinamen with white foremen and a "boss/translator". A single foreman (often Irish) with a gang of 30 to 40 Chinese men generally constituted the force at work at each end of a tunnel; of these, 12 to 15 men worked on the heading, and the rest on the bottom, removing blasted material. When a gang was small or the men were needed elsewhere, the bottoms were worked with fewer men or stopped so as to keep the headings going." The laborers usually worked three shifts of 8 hours each per day, while the foremen worked in two shifts of 12 hours each, managing the laborers.John R. Gillis, "Tunnels of the Pacific Railroad." Van Nostrand's Eclectic Engineering Magazine, January 5, 1870, pp. 418–423. Once out of the Sierra, construction was much easier and faster. Under the direction of construction superintendent James Harvey Strobridge, Central Pacific track-laying crews set a record with of track laid in one day on April 28, 1869. Horace Hamilton Minkler, track foreman for the Central Pacific, laid the last rail and tie before the Last Spike was driven.

order to keep the CPRR's Sierra grade open during the winter months, beginning in 1867, of massive wooden snow sheds and galleries were built between Blue Cañon and Truckee, covering cuts and other points where there was danger of avalanches. 2,500 men and six material trains were employed in this work, which was completed in 1869. The sheds were built with two sides and a steep peaked roof, mostly of locally cut hewn timber and round logs. Snow galleries had one side and a roof that sloped upward until it met the mountainside, thus permitting avalanches to slide over the galleries, some of which extended up the mountainside as much as . Masonry walls such as the "Chinese Walls" at Donner Summit were built across canyons to prevent avalanches from striking the side of the vulnerable wooden construction.Galloway, C.E., John Debo The First Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Simmons-Boardman, (1950). Ch. 7.Cooper, Bruce C. "CPRR Summit Tunnel (#6), Tunnels #7 & #8, Snowsheds, "Chinese" Walls, Donner Trail, and Dutch Flat Donner – Lake Wagon Road at Donner Pass" CPRR.org "Period construction images of snowsheds at Cisco and Donner Summit" CPRR.org A few concrete sheds (mostly at crossovers) are still in use today.

In the East, the progress started in Omaha, Nebraska, by the Union Pacific Railroad which initially proceeded very quickly because of the open terrain of the Great Plains. This changed as the work entered Indian-held lands, because the railroad violated Native American treaties with the United States. War parties began to raid the moving labor camps that followed the progress of the line. Union Pacific responded by increasing security and hiring marksmen to kill American Bison, which were both a physical threat to trains and the primary food source for many of the Plains Indians. The Native Americans then began killing laborers when they realized that the so-called "Iron Horse" threatened their existence. Security measures were further strengthened, and progress on the railroad continued.

Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's first postwar command (Military Division of the Mississippi) covered the territory west of the Mississippi and east of the Rocky Mountains, and his top priority was to protect the construction of the railroads. In 1867, he wrote to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, "we are not going to let thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress" of the railroads.

"On the ground in the West, Gen. Philip Henry Sheridan, assuming Sherman's command, took to his task much as he had done in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War, when he ordered the "scorched earth" tactics that presaged Sherman's March to the Sea."

"The devastation of the buffalo population signalled the end of the Indian Wars, and Native Americans were pushed into reservations. In 1869, the Comanche chief Tosawi was reported to have told Sheridan, "Me Tosawi. Me good Indian," and Sheridan allegedly replied, "The only good Indians I ever saw were dead." The phrase was later misquoted, with Sheridan supposedly stating, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." Sheridan denied he had ever said such a thing."

"By the end of the 19th century, only 300 buffalo were left in the wild. Congress finally took action, outlawing the killing of any birds or animals in Yellowstone National Park, where the only surviving buffalo herd could be protected. Conservationists established more wildlife preserves, and the species slowly rebounded. Today, there are more than 200,000 bison in North America."

"Sheridan acknowledged the role of the railroad in changing the face of the American West, and in his Annual Report of the General of the U.S. Army in 1878, he acknowledged that the Native Americans were scuttled to reservations with no compensation beyond the promise of religious instruction and basic supplies of food and clothing—promises, he wrote, which were never fulfilled."

"We took away their country and their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them, and it was for this and against this they made war. Could any one expect less? Then, why wonder at Indian difficulties?"