First Transcontinental Railroad

First Transcontinental Railroad

The first Transcontinental Railroad was constructed in North America in the 19th century. The railroad is 3069 km long and connected the Pacific coast at San Francisco Bay with Eastern US Rail network at Council Bluffs Lowa on the Missouri River. The Railroad was first proposed in 1830 and the route was surveyed at large scale by a team of Archeologists, Scientists, and Artists who carried an expedition of around 1,000,000 km2 of area from 1853 to 1855. This survey produced 12 massive volumes of data describing the flora, fauna, native people, various tribes, weather conditions and topography of the whole area. After this massive report was published, it was considered the best source of information for those who want to know about North America but the only drawback in the whole 12 volumes was that it didn’t contain any map which could help in selecting a suitable railroad plan among various suggested routes. The whole construction was completed by three private companies named as ‘Western Pacific Railroad Company’, ‘Central Pacific Railroad Company of California’ and ‘Union Pacific Railroad Company’.

At that time the gap between the two rail tracks was mostly kept 5 feet, but the gap between the new Transcontinental Railroad which was then known as ‘Pacific Railroad’, was kept 4 ft 8.5 in which we call the ‘Standard Gauge’ today. Since Steel Rails were newly introduced, the advantages of using them over iron rails were not known, so iron rails were used to minimize investments, though almost all the rails were replaced with the steel rails within few years of use due to wear and tear. Apart from these, another development made in the railroad was installation of snow sheds in the snowfall prone areas since it was difficult to maintain open tracks. Newer and better bridges were also constructed afterwards.

The Railroad proved to be a milestone for the development of American Business since it was the cheapest and the fastest way of transportation of goods across such a large area. BBC proclaimed the railroad as one of the ‘Seven Wonders of the Industrial World’.

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