Foreword

On May 10, 1869 the tracks of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads were joined to create the Transcontinental Railroad. The first public railway, the Liverpool and Manchester railway, had opened less than forty years earlier on a track only thirty-five miles long. A journey from New York to San Francisco could now be completed in days rather than months.

The railroad was the Internet of its day. The benefits of fast, cheap, and reliable transport were obvious to all, but so was the challenge of building an iron road thousands of miles long through mountains and over rivers. Even though few people doubted that a railroad spanning the North American continent would eventually be completed, it took real vision and courage to make ...

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