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Cool Facts About Trains | Nat Geo Kids Transportation Playlist

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First Transcontinental Railroad
History >>Westward Expansion

The First Transcontinental Railroad stretched from the East Coast of the United States to the West Coast. No longer would people travel in long wagon trains that took months to reachCalifornia. They could now travel faster, safer, and cheaper by train. In addition to people, things like mail, supplies, and trade goods could now be shipped across the country in just a few days. The railroad was built between 1863 and 1869.

Background

The first talk of a transcontinental railroad started around 1830. One of the first promoters of the railroad was a merchant named Asa Whitney. Asa tried hard for many years to get Congress to pass an act to build the railroad, but failed. However, in the 1860s Theodore Judah began to lobby for a railroad. He surveyed the Sierra Nevada Mountains and found a pass where the railroad could be built.

The Route

There were two main routes along which people wanted the first railroad to be built.

One route was called the "central route". It followed much the same route as the Oregon Trail. It would begin in Omaha, Nebraska and end up in Sacramento, California.

The other route was the "southern route". This route would stretch across Texas, New Mexico, and end up in Los Angeles, California.

The central route was eventually chosen by Congress.

Route of the First Transcontinental Railroad by Unknown

Pacific Railroad Act

In 1862President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act into law. The act said that there were two main railroad lines. The Central Pacific Railroad would come from California and the Union Pacific Railroad would come from the Midwest. The two railroads would meet somewhere in the middle.

The act gave the railroad companies land where they could build the railroad. It also paid them for each mile that they built. They were paid more money for miles of track built in themountains versus miles of track built on the flat plains.

Building the Railroad

Across the Continent
by Joseph Becker

Building the railroad was tough, hard work. Weather conditions were especially tough in the mountains during the winter. A lot of times the only way to travel over the mountains was to go through the mountains by blasting a tunnel. The Central Pacific Railroad had to blast a number of tunnels through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The longest tunnel built was 1659 feet long. It took a long time to build the tunnels. They were able to blast around one foot per day on average.

While the Central Pacific Railroad had to deal with mountains and snow, the Union Pacific Railroad was challenged byNative Americans raids. As the Native Americans came to realize the threat to their way of life that the "Iron Horse" was going to bring, they began to raid the railroad work sites. Also, a lot of the land that was "granted" to the railroad by the government was actually Native American land.

The Workers

The majority of the workers on the Union Pacific Railroad were Irish laborers, many who had served in both the Union and the Confederate armies. In Utah, a lot of the track was built by Mormon workers. Most of the Central Pacific Railroad was built by Chinese immigrants.

The Golden Spike

The two railroads finally met at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869. Leland Stanford, governor of California and president of the Central Pacific Railroad, drove in the last spike. This final spike was called the "Golden Spike" or "The Final Spike". You can see it today at Stanford University in California.

Driving the Golden Spike on 10th May, 1869
by American School

Interesting Facts about the First Transcontinental Railroad

The Pony Express traveled a similar route to the central route and helped to prove that the route was passable in winter.

The transcontinental railroad was also called the Pacific Railroad and the Overland Route.

The total length of the First Transcontinental Railroad was 1,776 miles.

The Central Pacific Railroad was controlled by four men called the "Big Four". They were Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker.

It was later, in November of 1869, when the Central Pacific connected San Francisco to Sacramento.

Activities

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Works Cited

History >>Westward Expansion

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Kids learn about the First Transcontinental Railroad. Fun facts about the route, the Union Pacific, and the Pacific Railroad Act.

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A steam locomotive is a steam powered railway locomotive. It was used a lot between about 1830 and 1970. Afterwards, diesel and electric locomotives were used more often. The first steam locomotive was made by Richard Trevithick for a railway used for moving iron at an ironworks in Wales. A steam locomotive works by burning a fuel like coal in a special space called a firebox. This produces hot gases that rise and go through tubes in a boiler - a large space with water in it. This heats the water, producing steam. The steam is then taken through another tube to a cylinder. The steam then pushes the piston which in turn pushes a metal rod that is connected to the wheels, making the locomotive move. The steam then rises out through the chimney.

Steam locomotives are still today used in many developing countries where the railways have not yet been electrified.

The earliest railways employed horses to draw carts along rail tracks. In 1784, William Murdoch, a Scottish inventor, built a small-scale prototype of a steam road locomotive in Birmingham. A full-scale rail steam locomotive was proposed by William Reynolds around 1787. An early working model of a steam rail locomotive was designed and constructed by steamboat pioneer John Fitch in the US during 1794. His steam locomotive used interior bladed wheels guided by rails or tracks. The model still exists at the Ohio Historical Society Museum in Columbus. The authenticity and date of this locomotive is disputed by some experts and a workable steam train would have to await the invention of the high-pressure steam engine by Richard Trevithick, who pioneered the use of steam locomotives.

The first full-scale working railway steam locomotive, was the 3 ft (914 mm) gauge Coalbrookdale Locomotive, built by Trevithick in 1802. It was constructed for the Coalbrookdale ironworks in Shropshire in the United Kingdom though no record of it working there has survived. On 21 February 1804, the first recorded steam-hauled railway journey took place as another of Trevithick's locomotives hauled a train along the 4 ft 4 in (1,321 mm) tramway from the Pen-y-darren ironworks, near Merthyr Tydfil, to Abercynon in South Wales. Accompanied by Andrew Vivian, it ran with mixed success. The design incorporated a number of important innovations that included using high-pressure steam which reduced the weight of the engine and increased its efficiency.

Trevithick visited the Newcastle area in 1804 and had a ready audience of colliery (coal mine) owners and engineers. The visit was so successful that the colliery railways in north-east England became the leading centre for experimentation and development of the steam locomotive. Trevithick continued his own steam propulsion experiments through another trio of locomotives, concluding with the Catch Me Who Can in 1808.

In 1812, Matthew Murray's successful twin-cylinder rack locomotive Salamanca first ran on the edge-railed rack-and-pinion Middleton Railway. Another well-known early locomotive was Puffing Billy, built 1813-14 by engineer William Hedley. It was intended to work on the Wylam Colliery near Newcastle upon Tyne. This locomotive is the oldest preserved, and is on static display in the Science Museum, London.

George Stephenson

George Stephenson, a former miner working as an engine-wright at Killingworth Colliery, developed up to sixteen Killingworth locomotives, including Blücher in 1814, another in 1815, and a (newly-identified) Killingworth Billy in 1816. He also constructed The Duke in 1817 for the Kilmarnock and Troon Railway, which was the first steam locomotive to work in Scotland.

In 1825, George Stephenson built Locomotion No. 1 for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, north-east England, which was the first public steam railway in the world. In 1829, his son Robert built in Newcastle The Rocket which was entered in and won the Rainhill Trials. This success led to the company emerging as the pre-eminent builder of steam locomotives used on railways in the UK, US and much of Europe. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened a year later making exclusive use of steam power for passenger and goods trains.

United States

Many of the earliest locomotives for American railroads were imported from Great Britain, including first the Stourbridge Lion and later the John Bull (still the oldest operable engine-powered vehicle in the United States of any kind, as of 1981) however a domestic locomotive-manufacturing industry was quickly established. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's in 1830, designed and built by Peter Cooper, was the first US-built locomotive to run in America, although it was intended as a demonstration of the potential of steam traction, rather than as a revenue-earning locomotive. The DeWitt Clinton was also built in the 1830s.

Continental Europe

The first railway service outside the United Kingdom and North America was opened in 1829 in France between Saint-Etienne and Lyon. Then on 5 May 1835, the first line in Belgium linked Mechelen and Brussels. The locomotive was named The Elephant.

In Germany, the first working steam locomotive was a rack-and-pinion engine, similar to the Salamanca, designed by the British locomotive pioneer John Blenkinsop. Built in June 1816 by Johann Friedrich Krigar in the Royal Berlin Iron Foundry ( Königliche Eisengießerei zu Berlin), the locomotive ran on a circular track in the factory yard. It was the first locomotive to be built on the European mainland and the first steam-powered passenger service; curious onlookers could ride in the attached coaches for a fee. It is portrayed on a New Year's badge for the Royal Foundry dated 1816. Another locomotive was built using the same system in 1817. They were to be used on pit railways in Königshütte and in Luisenthal on the Saar (today part of Völklingen), but neither could be returned to working order after being dismantled, moved and reassembled. On 7 December 1835, the Adler ran for the first time between Nuremberg and Fürth on the Bavarian Ludwig Railway. It was the 118th engine from the locomotive works of Robert Stephenson and stood under patent protection.

In 1837, the first steam railway started in Austria on the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway between Vienna-Floridsdorf and Deutsch-Wagram. The oldest continually working steam engine in the world also runs in Austria: the GKB 671 built in 1860, has never been taken out of service, and is still used for special excursions.

In 1838, the third steam locomotive to be built in Germany, the Saxonia, was manufactured by the Maschinenbaufirma Übigau near Dresden, built by Prof. Johann Andreas Schubert. The first independently designed locomotive in Germany was the Beuth, built by August Borsig in 1841. The first locomotive produced by Henschel-Werke in Kassel, the Drache, was delivered in 1848.

The first steam locomotives operating in Italy were the Bayard and the Vesuvio, running on the Napoli-Portici line, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

The first railway line over Swiss territory was the Strasbourg- Basle line opened in 1844. Three years later, in 1847, the first fully Swiss railway line, the Spanisch Brötli Bahn, from Zürich to Baden was opened.

Images for kids

Aftermath of a boiler explosion on a railway locomotive, c. 1850

Preserved Great Western Railway locomotive 7802 Bradley Manor, with two oil lamps signifying an express passenger service, and a high-intensity electric lamp added for safety standards

U-127, the oil burning De Glehn compound locomotive that pulled Lenin's funeral train, in the Museum of the Moscow Railway at Paveletsky Rail Terminal

The Gov. Stanford, a 4-4-0 (using Whyte notation) locomotive typical of 19th-century American practice

California Western Railroad No. 45 (builder No. 58045), built by Baldwin in 1924, is a 2-8-2 Mikado locomotive. It is still in use today on the Skunk Train.

The 200th steam locomotive built by Clyde Engineering (TF 1164) from the Powerhouse Museum collection

Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad 425 being readied in Pennsylvania, US, for the daily tourist train in 1993

In Spanish: Locomotora de vapor para niños

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