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- Passing the Pacific Rail Act
- Work Conditions
- How They Built the Railroad
- There was a man named Theodore Judah (left) who wanted to build a Transcontinental Railroad from the East to West of America. But he ran into the problem of money. So he went to Congress to pass the Pacific Rail Act and on July, 1 1862 President Abraham Lincoln (mid) signed the act into law. Judah sadly died one year after and never got to see it finished. The task was split between the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific Companies.
- The $10,000 Wager
- The workers building the Central Pacific Railroad consisted of about 11,000 Chinese, 2,000 Irish and a few African Americans and White Mormons. At the beginning of construction the other workers didn't trust the Chinese but they turned out to be good workers, but even then they would give them dangerous and lower paying tasks. Often the workers would be injured or killed by accident explosions, avalanches, extreme weather, sickness and Native American attacks on the "Iron Horse."
- The 10 Mile Day
- The way they built railroads is first the tamper would pack down ballast or the little rocks under the wood. Then they would lay the ties or the wood on top of it, after that the "gandy dancer" would lay the rail on the ties and make sure that its the right distance apart. Once it was set they would drive the spikes into the wood next to the rail with a maul or sledgehammer so it wouldn't move around at the same time they would connect the rails with a fishplate and nuts and bolts going through it.
- The Golden Spike
- When they started building the railroad from two sides, one starting from the West called the Central Pacific run by Charles Crocker (left) and the other from the East called the Union Pacific and run by Thomas C. Durant (right) to meet in the middle. Durant bragged to Crocker that his men had laid 7 miles of track in one day. So in response Crocker made a $10,000 wager that his railroad company could build 10 miles of track in one day.
- At 7:00 A.M. they officially started the days work by unloading all of the rail they needed for 8 minutes straight! The foremen at the front laid the rail at around 20 seconds per rail. Each rail was 30ft long and 560lbs! At around 1:30 pm the men stopped for lunch and found that they had laid around 6 miles of track because of their accomplishment they called that place Camp Victory. They resumed work again at 2:30 through promontory summit which had lots of turns but luckily at 7:00P.M. they had covered 10 miles and 56 feet!
- At 11:00 A.M. on May 10, 1869 to solidify the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad Leland Stanford, Thomas Durant and other head officials gathered to hammer the last four golden spikes into the ground of the railroad. But as expected they were taken quickly and replaced by some Chinese so that it would actually function. Lastly Leland Stanford tried to hammer the last spike and missed but they telegraphed that it was done anyways.
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