The Transcontiental Railroad: Costly Chicanery

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Active Member of Western Writers of America

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The cost of the transcontinental railroad was enormous. It is estimated that the American people spent between $96 million and $111.5 million to built the railroad that connected San Francisco, California, to Omaha, Nebraska.

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Some of this cost was caused by chicanery and greed, rather than personnel, equipment, and supplies. Thomas C. Durant, who was in charge of the Union Pacific Railroad's westward building of the railroad, sought to profit personally from the enterprise, often through criminal undertakings.

In December 1863, the Union Pacific broke ground in Omaha, Nebraska. The company was supposed to have started to build the westward railroad in Council Bluffs, Iowa, but Durant owned land in Omaha. By starting the railroad in Omaha, he hoped to raise the value of his own property.¹

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He and his partners controlled Credit Mobilier, a construction company Durant founded. After overcharging the federal government, he deposited the “extra” funds into the company's account.² The Congressmen who participated in Durant's scam also profited greatly.³ The Union Pacific's chief engineer quit in disgust, and, by the end of 1865, Durant had laid no more than 40 miles of track.⁴ The Union Pacific's chief engineer, Peter A. Dey, was so disgusted by Durant's dishonesty that Dey quit working for the Union Pacific Railroad. Durant replaced the departed engineer with General Grenville Dodge.⁵

Although the federal government paid the railroad company well for each mile of track it laid and gave the company the land alongside the tracks, Durant found a way to increase his own fortunes. He started to buy extra land near the pathway along which surveyors had identified for the railroad's route, hoping to profit by an increase in the value of this land, an all-but-certain eventuality.

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Durant wasn't the only person to cheat the federal government. As the Union Pacific's track neared that of the company's partner and rival, the Pacific Central Railroad, both Durant and the had of the Pacific Central refused to name a meeting point. Instead, they continued to lay track, sometimes alongside one another. Finally, President Ulysses S Grant ordered the leaders to name a meeting point; if they did not, Grant told them, he would do so. Soon afterward, the railroaders named Promontory Summit, Utah, as the place at which their respective companies' tracks should join with one another.⁶

Doing business with Brigham Young, the Mormon leader with whom Durant signed a $2 million contract to build a track grade across much of Utah, also proved needlessly expensive, and, when the Central Pacific Railroad reached Utah, Young signed a similar contract with the Big Four, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, Collis P. Huntington, and Mark Hopkins. Consequently, the Mormons built two paths for the tracks, one of which was never used, just as Young knew it would not be.⁷

The greed of these railroad builders might have resulted in worse than misspent funds. Cuts through hills were expensive and required a lot of time. Therefore, necessary cuts were not made. Instead, tracks were laid around hills. Years later, these large circles were removed and replaced with straight track, which added more to the already-considerable cost of the transcontinental railroad.⁸

Hardwood was supplied from back east. Waiting for it to arrive added greater expense. Instead of ordering the hardwood, the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific used pine cross ties. Pine was too soft for this purpose. As a result, they failed to support the weight of the trains. They, too, had to be removed and replaced, at an additional cost.⁹

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1The Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske

2Ibid.

3Ibid.

4Ibid.

5Ibid.

6Ibid.

7The Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.

8Ibid.

9Ibid.

The Transcontinental Railroad: The Greatest American Achievement of the 19th Century!

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Active Member of the Western Writers Association

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In 1862, Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act, authorizing and funding the construction of the transcontinental railroad.

Two companies would lay the track, surveying routes, constructing trestles and bridges, blasting tunnels through mountains or ledges out of sheer mountainsides, fighting Native Americans who resisted whites' encroachment upon their ancestral lands, and, of course, laying track. The Cheyenne removed sections of track and cut telegraph lines and attacked repairmen.[1] The Sioux and Arapaho joined them in attacking settlers, stealing from them, removing surveyors's stakes, derailing trains, and killing railroad workers.[2]

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Along the way, the companies' workers also strung hundreds of miles of telegraph lines, connecting the western and the eastern halves of the nation both by both rail and wire and making transportation and communication available across the continental United States.

It was a huge enterprise, the biggest of the nineteenth century, and enormously expensive, costing between $96 million and $111.5 million[3] and requiring 10,000 horses and as many workers for the Union Pacific Railroad alone[4], Irish (on the Union Pacific railroad's crews). Chinese made up 80 percent of the Central Pacific Railroad's workers, and Civil War veterans and 1,000 freed African-American slaves worked for both railroads.[5] Whites were paid $35 per month, Chinese $30 per month; Chinese workers were also provided food, including special items that had to be brought by railroad from the east.[6] In Utah, Mormon laborers also helped to build the railroad.[7]

UPRR workers who took their meals aboard the company's supply train ate in a dining car, which sat 125 men per shift. Their tin plates were nailed to the tabletop, and between meals consisting of beef, hard bread, boiled beans, and black coffee, kitchen workers "cleaned" the plates with hand-help "mops."[8]

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Workers had to contend with blizzards, landslides, thunderstorms, mountains, and Native Americans who sought to defend their lands from the iron horse and the settlements of whites the railroad inevitably brought.

The men who built the transcontinental railroad lived under harsh conditions. Quarters aboard the UPRR's supply train were crowded and infested with lice, so many men preferred to sleep in tents.[9] Bathing occurred rarely, and most camps smelled of sweat and worse, as drinking water was contaminated with bacteria that caused diarrhea.[10]

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As much as possible, construction followed a set pattern: surveyors, operating as much as 100 miles in advance of other work crews[11], selected the path and marked it with stakes.

Then, grading crews leveled the pathway, building a raised bed, 12-feet wide (wide enough to accommodate two sets of side-by-side tracks), to lay track on. The graders' bosses leveled the bed with shovels or a heavy scraper haled by horses or oxen. When graders ran into rocks they couldn't move, they used explosives to blast them. Additional crews built bridges or blasted tunnels as needed.[12]

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 Next, a work crew laid ties (six-foot-long, split logs or planks) on the bed. The men then laid 28-foot-long, 500-pound iron rails[13] on the ties, securing them in place by hammering iron spikes through the rails and into the wood. The track layers worked in pairs, five on each side of a rail.[14]

The construction of the transcontinental railroad took about six years. The CPRR broke ground in Omaha, Nebraska, on January 8, 1863, and its railroad joined the UPRR's line at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869.

There's much more to the story, including the solutions engineers developed for the tremendous problems they encountered due to adverse weather and seemingly insurmountable obstacles that certain terrain features presented. Greed and immorality also caused complications and significant cost overruns. Look for these stories in future posts!

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[1]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes

[2]The Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske

[3]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes

[4]Ibid.

[5]The Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske

[6]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes

[7]The Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.

[8]Ibid.

[9]Ibid.

[10]The Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske

[11]The Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.

[12]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes

[13]The Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.

[14]The Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes