I need help with a project for school

[vsmith]

If you're using Frank Zappa's "Valley Girl" lyrics I assume your probably between 30 and 40. I'm 40 and I remember that song being in the mid-80's. Or you could be over 50 and a die-hard rapid foaming at the mouth Zappa fan like my older brother, he knows all the lyrics to "Billy was a Mountain"...(Obscure Zappa song reference for all you youngsters out there)

[vsmith]

If you're using Frank Zappa's "Valley Girl" lyrics I assume your probably between 30 and 40. I'm 40 and I remember that song being in the mid-80's. Or you could be over 50 and a die-hard rapid foaming at the mouth Zappa fan like my older brother, he knows all the lyrics to "Billy was a Mountain"...(Obscure Zappa song reference for all you youngsters out there)

[yellowducky]

Maybe the real test is not the answers, but would we be willing to help?
I hear that the rail has been relocated (straightened out?) and the actual place where the transcon. golden spike was driven, is now a couple of miles out. Any U.P. fan out there with the knowledge I seek, or had I better hit the library, or at least start reading my copy of "Nothing Like It in the World"? I quote from pg.12: "they began pointing out grading that had been abandoned." IS this referring to the actual line, or temporary access roads?
1.Off hand, I'd say to the Rocky Mountains on the east end and to the Sierra Nevadas on the west end (Cisco).
2.About 2 weeks, with about 2 ("if by land") years thrown in the middle of it !!!
3.Steerage tickets on a ship to California, $80. Anybody know about rates by rail for those portions that were done? And what was the cost of buying a wagon ,teem, and supplies to get between the ends?
4. I think there was some kind of rule about no TV or viedo games, and surfing the net was a big no-no!!! Otherwise, is there a history buff out there that knows about life on the frontier, circa 1863-1867?
"TRAINing, it's more than a good way to teach." Frank

[yellowducky]

Maybe the real test is not the answers, but would we be willing to help?
I hear that the rail has been relocated (straightened out?) and the actual place where the transcon. golden spike was driven, is now a couple of miles out. Any U.P. fan out there with the knowledge I seek, or had I better hit the library, or at least start reading my copy of "Nothing Like It in the World"? I quote from pg.12: "they began pointing out grading that had been abandoned." IS this referring to the actual line, or temporary access roads?
1.Off hand, I'd say to the Rocky Mountains on the east end and to the Sierra Nevadas on the west end (Cisco).
2.About 2 weeks, with about 2 ("if by land") years thrown in the middle of it !!!
3.Steerage tickets on a ship to California, $80. Anybody know about rates by rail for those portions that were done? And what was the cost of buying a wagon ,teem, and supplies to get between the ends?
4. I think there was some kind of rule about no TV or viedo games, and surfing the net was a big no-no!!! Otherwise, is there a history buff out there that knows about life on the frontier, circa 1863-1867?
"TRAINing, it's more than a good way to teach." Frank

[Puckdropper]

I don't think so. "Haley" just wanted our knowledge. I may admire Vulcans, but I am sure not one!

Btw, your age guesses are way off... I'm 18, and got the idea for the reference from the humor section of repairfaq.org. (The use of the word engineer there is meant as one who designs things, not who runs a train.)

[Puckdropper]

I don't think so. "Haley" just wanted our knowledge. I may admire Vulcans, but I am sure not one!

Btw, your age guesses are way off... I'm 18, and got the idea for the reference from the humor section of repairfaq.org. (The use of the word engineer there is meant as one who designs things, not who runs a train.)

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Puckdropper

I don't think so. "Haley" just wanted our knowledge. I may admire Vulcans, but I am sure not one!

Btw, your age guesses are way off... I'm 18, and got the idea for the reference from the humor section of repairfaq.org. (The use of the word engineer there is meant as one who designs things, not who runs a train.)

Puckdropper, [^] since we are guessing at things ... do you ref hockey games?

Drop me an email if you like.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Puckdropper

I don't think so. "Haley" just wanted our knowledge. I may admire Vulcans, but I am sure not one!

Btw, your age guesses are way off... I'm 18, and got the idea for the reference from the humor section of repairfaq.org. (The use of the word engineer there is meant as one who designs things, not who runs a train.)

Puckdropper, [^] since we are guessing at things ... do you ref hockey games?

Drop me an email if you like.

[Anonymous]

Jim, i was going to ask the same question... but you were first.

[Anonymous]

Jim, i was going to ask the same question... but you were first.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Alaskaman

Jim, i was going to ask the same question... but you were first.

Alex, just endorse that check and mail it to me. I will put it to good use for you. Who knows I might just really need it, there are good indication of a layoff today at work. Hope not, but the aircraft industy is either feast or famine and because of the super bad economy and 9-11 added to the bad economy things in the aircraft field are a little (actually a LOT) screwed up. I hope that tonight when I get back on the computer I can say I still have a job but don't know until I go to work. We have had a layoff about 1 year ago, now it looks like another one is very close at hand. Not a good thing at all.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Alaskaman

Jim, i was going to ask the same question... but you were first.

Alex, just endorse that check and mail it to me. I will put it to good use for you. Who knows I might just really need it, there are good indication of a layoff today at work. Hope not, but the aircraft industy is either feast or famine and because of the super bad economy and 9-11 added to the bad economy things in the aircraft field are a little (actually a LOT) screwed up. I hope that tonight when I get back on the computer I can say I still have a job but don't know until I go to work. We have had a layoff about 1 year ago, now it looks like another one is very close at hand. Not a good thing at all.

[Mookie]

Mookie will keep her pseudo-fingers crossed for you.

[Mookie]

Mookie will keep her pseudo-fingers crossed for you.

[Puckdropper]

What check? I don't pay anyone to interview me! Do you think I'm stupid?

Btw, on the subjects of checks, I got a blank one once.

Also, my Dad played in an Adult league, and I went w/ him. They wanted to have someone drop the puck after goals (and would have preferred a ref...) so I got to do that. It was quite a bit of fun!

Btw, the transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Point, Utah, Right? (We forgot the post's original subject.)

[Puckdropper]

What check? I don't pay anyone to interview me! Do you think I'm stupid?

Btw, on the subjects of checks, I got a blank one once.

Also, my Dad played in an Adult league, and I went w/ him. They wanted to have someone drop the puck after goals (and would have preferred a ref...) so I got to do that. It was quite a bit of fun!

Btw, the transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Point, Utah, Right? (We forgot the post's original subject.)

[ironhorseman]

"Four men seize a rail and so four rails go down to the minute. It is a grand anvil chorus. Three strokes to the spike, ten spikes to the rail, 400 rails to the mile, 1800 miles to San Francisco." -from The Iron Road

For you folks on the forum: you’re too harsh or you really don’ know the answers. You could get a simple answer for each question, BUT it would lack substance, meaning, and understanding. Only #1 has a simple answer: look at a map. #2-4 could be answered in a sentence, but it would not cover all aspects of the question. Now instead of just saying “go look it up” why not try to be challenging? Inspire the thought process.

The simple answers will be posted at the end of this post, but I warn you that you won’t learn anything if you skip to the bottom, you won’t gain a real understanding of what things were really like.

I have no idea what grade you are in or how these answers are going to be used, so I wasn’t sure how to write my answers. Is it for a written report? Group presentation? Class project? A worksheet?

I’m going to leave my answers very open ended by putting in keywords and putting in partial info. For the complete answers go to the library.

Consider this approach to your research:What do YOU think the answers are? I know everybody says “go to the library, go to the library, go to the library.” These are actually some pretty darn good questions. If you want an in depth answer, read mine. If you want to be lazy, skip to the bottom.

1. Your question: What places could you go on the transcontinental railroad 1863-1867?

My question: when was the first transcontinental railroad completed? Hint #1: after 1867. I could answer this two ways: where you could go on the transcon route in progress of being built up to 1867, or where you could go on a completed transcon route. If you look hard enough you’ll find some maps in some books. Nothing Like In The World by the late Stephen E. Ambrose. I never got past CH 1 because my dad took it from me to read for himself (and he bought it for ME for Christmas! Can you believe?) It has a map on the inside cover and this is the newest book (2001) on the first transcontinental railroad, but there are other books just as good. My answer to you now is: not many places (on the actual route, you’ll see why when you see a map).

2. Your Question: How long did it take to travel from New York to California on the transcontinental railroad 1863-67?

My answer: again, two ways, in the years you stated or in the years after the railroad was complete. And then there are even more answers on the method of travel. I’m going to assume you don’t know the route of the transcontinental railroad. Hint #1: It didn’t start in New York. Hint #2: Sacramento was the California town it terminated in. Hint #3: I’ll just say the transcon RR began at the frontier. Railroads east of there had been established as early as 1829.

That’s my easy answer, again refer to #1. Here’s my long answer, something that has taken me years to realize, and it will cover how long it took to get from NY to the frontier and then from there to CA, but this is only to give you an understanding of what it was like. This is not an easy answer to come by in any one book or videotape or one trip to a museum.

New York to California? Why would anyone want to go from New York to California? Seeing how your dates don’t include a finished transcon RR the answer would be weeks from NY to the frontier and months from the frontier to CA. There were many, many hardships. Anyone traveling by rail at that time would have to change trains and railroads many times. The depots for opposing railroads in towns and cities weren’t conveniently at the same station or next door. They were usually clear across town and in a city where the maze of streets were congested with horse drawn carts and no traffic signals. And to make matters worse a person would have literally minutes to get from one station to the next to catch the connecting train or risk spending the night in a strange city in some God-forsaken sleazy hotel that the traveler could afford.

Pullman had not yet invented his sleeping cars. In the process a traveler had to put up with crowed, smoke filled passenger coaches which were hot in the summer and freezing in the winter unless you sat next to the open pot-bellied stove which threatened to incinerate everyone in the event of an accident. And accidents were far too common in that era with poor track construction and when the trains weren’t running slow engineers taking the trains to risky speeds. Once at the frontier a person embarked on a whole new set of challenges. People were still traveling to California by wagon train as late as 1869, but the next year everyone was traveling by train to go that far. In good weather a wagon train could go from Independence to Sacramento in three months, but no without hardship (ie the infamous Donner Party).

The only people that went from NY to CA before 1869 where those who planned to live out west. A person could also go by ship or across the Isthmus of Panama. I’ll let you find out how many months those two routes took and the hardships travelers faced on each journey.

3. Your Question: What was the price of transcontinental railroad ticket 1863-1867?

My answer: Who knows and who cares? No, really. I’m not saying this to be mean or sarcastic, but that’s the reaction you would get from one college professor I know who would say “this is pointless trivia.” It’s not substantive. But, there are probably records of this somewhere. You might want to check with a museum or a historical society. You’ll also have to consider inflation and the economics of the 1860s. Also, think about how far the trip is going to be. Is it from the frontier to California? Is it from one town to another only 100 miles away? Or is it from NY to CA? The answer to those three situations would be: a lot, not much, and very expensive. Remember, people didn’t travel unless they had to, and they certainly didn’t go to California unless they wanted to live there. Refer to what I said for question #2 about interchanging with railroads. There wasn’t any one single train that went straight across the country. A person would have to change trains on the same railroad and with other railroads.

A thought just occurred to me while answering this and I think it’s important to bring this up. Don’t ask how many railroads there were at this time or in all of American history. At this time in history you could fill a phone book with railroad names. From then to about the 1950s there were all kinds of railroads imaginable running anywhere and everywhere. It’s only been in the last 50 years railroads have been bankrupt, liquidated, and merged into a 3x5 card size list of new ones.

#4 Your Question: What adventures could you be apart of in the west in 1863-1867?

How do I answer this? How can anybody answer this? It’s not like in the movies. This is a general misconception. This deserves a full answer because it’s not just as simple as looking it up. There’s a new thing going around in the history circles nowadays called revisionist history. Revisionist history is history from the perspective of the common man. They’ve taken diaries or frontiersman citizens and are putting them in the history books and trying to paint a picture from their point of view. Where people lived, how they lived, what they had, what they did, where they went to church, how they worshiped, etc. Before it used to be all about the business and political figures and major events in history.

So I’ll give it to you straight, this is what I’ve come to learn from all the books I’ve read and all the BORING lectures I sat through in college.

Adventures: HA! Do you want the truth or a sugar-coated answer? I'll give you a little bit of both. The answer to this question isn‘t easy to come by. To get a full sense of what the wild west was really like one would have to have had 12th grade level history, a couple of college courses, and hours in various libraries and museums across the country. I have minored in history and my dad is a history/government/civics teacher and we have literally 30 years worth of history books and history videotapes.

"Go west, young man, go west." -Horace Greely. Although that quote came after the 1870s people's fascination with moving west boomed after the civil war. The wild west was from 1865-1893 when the frontier was declared closed. Jesse James was a legend before he was (allegedly) killed (which hasn't been proven yet) thanks to the dime novel. People went west for a better life and got a harder life than what they expected. In 1863 most people living in the fest were mainly farmers and mountain men. Texas and Kansas were official states, Nebraska came a few years later.

But on the plains most people live in sod houses or houses made of buffalo chips, which were also used for fire fuel. Water was unclean, disease was a threat to all children at least 5 and younger, and Indian attacks, although not as common as the movies would have you believe, where factor depending when and where
you were. Ice, snow, rain, heat, and drought were major hardships. People did ride wagons across the plains they mainly walked to California.

People were easy targets alone on the plains and in the mountains. The movies also dramatize this, but it still happened. Just as an example, an ancestor of mine on my dad's side of the family went down to Texas from Kentucky in the 1840s by himself. He left behind a wife a child. He was never heard from again. Now, you can speculate what really happened just as we have, but going to Texas at that time was probably not a good idea. His wife remarried and had more children, but the first child, the girl, is who the rest of our family is related to.

The only real adventure would have been the slaughtering of the bison. Anyone with a gun riding a train across the prairie in this time period could shoot a bison with ease. It was sport that almost wiped the bison into extinction. It was an American Safari, no need to go to Africa. But only the wealthy could afford to spend weeks roaming the plains shooting bison, deer, and bear. The cowboys and the railroad laborers liked gambling, drinking, fighting, and women and not necessarily in that order. That’s the closest to adventure the working man got and there was a good chance that any one of those or a combination could leave a man dead, sick, or injured. The Wild West: it was an adventure all right, although not a pleasant one.

"What was it that the engines said?
Pilots touching head to head
Facing on a single track
Half a world behind each back?"

REFERENCES:

Mark Twain's book "Roughing It" or see the Hallmark movie version of it. It’s about his “adventures” in the west out in and around California.

PBS documentary series "The American Experience: The Iron Road" for the transcontinental railroad, narrated by David McCullough (the narrator in the “Seabiscuit” movie).

Another good tape is one put out by the Reader’s Digest people called “All Aboard: 150 years on the right track.” This chronicles each of the major eras of American railroading from the steam locomotive’s invention right up to today’s freight trains.

Time-Life book series The Old West: The Railroaders and The Old West: The Cowboys.

Westward Expansion by Ray Allen Billington.

Railroads In America by Oliver Jenson.

Golden Spike National Historic Site http://www.utah.com/nationalsites/golden_spike.htm

The Romance and Folklore of North America’s Railroads by Bill Yenne

For an understanding in culture look for:
The Incorporation of America: Culture & Society in the gilded Age by Alan Trachtenberg
And
The Gilded Age or The Hazard of New Functions by Mark Wahlgren Summers

Some of these books and videos I used for research paper on the transcontinental railroad in 1997, even that website. I titled it “Built For A Need Out Of Greed.” That’s another hint of what the railroad was all about. I got an A on the project.

BEWARE of encyclopedias. Use these only to get names, dates, and places and use those keywords to search for materials on the subject.

My challenge to you is, if you want to really understand the first transcontinental railroad, is go look up Theodore “Crazy” Judah and find out why he was so crazy. Another key term is The Big Four and their relation to this Crazy Judah. Also look up Thomas C Durant and Grenville Dodge. What railroad did each one of these men work on? What qualified them to work for the railroad? And then tell me why the ceremony for the completion of the “Iron Road” was almost cancelled. And how did they communicate the message to the country that the last spike had been driven?

For the full answer to everyone one of your questions I’ll try and find some space on my website to post detailed answers. But all the facts that I have given here and will give on my website will not have come directly from any book or video. I reconstructed this mainly from memory, but you’ll find the facts to back up answers in books. The only thing I researched for these answers were the names of some people and those references.

Don’t go and quote me in class as your source being “some guy on the internet.” That’s not gonna work. Take the keywords from this info and go look it up in some books.

The simple answers:

1. Omaha, NE to Sacramento, CA on a completed route and all points in between (go look at a map).
2. A very long time to get from NY to CA.
3. Ticket prices are a mystery, but they were affordable.
4. If by adventure you mean fun, forget it. Life was hard. Only the wealthy could afford adventures like hunting and camping expeditions. Cattle drives were not glamorous, frontier life was very hard and dangerous, and railroad building, well, it could kill you if your coworkers try first. Go read a Mark Twain novel for adventure.

[ironhorseman]

"Four men seize a rail and so four rails go down to the minute. It is a grand anvil chorus. Three strokes to the spike, ten spikes to the rail, 400 rails to the mile, 1800 miles to San Francisco." -from The Iron Road

For you folks on the forum: you’re too harsh or you really don’ know the answers. You could get a simple answer for each question, BUT it would lack substance, meaning, and understanding. Only #1 has a simple answer: look at a map. #2-4 could be answered in a sentence, but it would not cover all aspects of the question. Now instead of just saying “go look it up” why not try to be challenging? Inspire the thought process.

The simple answers will be posted at the end of this post, but I warn you that you won’t learn anything if you skip to the bottom, you won’t gain a real understanding of what things were really like.

I have no idea what grade you are in or how these answers are going to be used, so I wasn’t sure how to write my answers. Is it for a written report? Group presentation? Class project? A worksheet?

I’m going to leave my answers very open ended by putting in keywords and putting in partial info. For the complete answers go to the library.

Consider this approach to your research:What do YOU think the answers are? I know everybody says “go to the library, go to the library, go to the library.” These are actually some pretty darn good questions. If you want an in depth answer, read mine. If you want to be lazy, skip to the bottom.

1. Your question: What places could you go on the transcontinental railroad 1863-1867?

My question: when was the first transcontinental railroad completed? Hint #1: after 1867. I could answer this two ways: where you could go on the transcon route in progress of being built up to 1867, or where you could go on a completed transcon route. If you look hard enough you’ll find some maps in some books. Nothing Like In The World by the late Stephen E. Ambrose. I never got past CH 1 because my dad took it from me to read for himself (and he bought it for ME for Christmas! Can you believe?) It has a map on the inside cover and this is the newest book (2001) on the first transcontinental railroad, but there are other books just as good. My answer to you now is: not many places (on the actual route, you’ll see why when you see a map).

2. Your Question: How long did it take to travel from New York to California on the transcontinental railroad 1863-67?

My answer: again, two ways, in the years you stated or in the years after the railroad was complete. And then there are even more answers on the method of travel. I’m going to assume you don’t know the route of the transcontinental railroad. Hint #1: It didn’t start in New York. Hint #2: Sacramento was the California town it terminated in. Hint #3: I’ll just say the transcon RR began at the frontier. Railroads east of there had been established as early as 1829.

That’s my easy answer, again refer to #1. Here’s my long answer, something that has taken me years to realize, and it will cover how long it took to get from NY to the frontier and then from there to CA, but this is only to give you an understanding of what it was like. This is not an easy answer to come by in any one book or videotape or one trip to a museum.

New York to California? Why would anyone want to go from New York to California? Seeing how your dates don’t include a finished transcon RR the answer would be weeks from NY to the frontier and months from the frontier to CA. There were many, many hardships. Anyone traveling by rail at that time would have to change trains and railroads many times. The depots for opposing railroads in towns and cities weren’t conveniently at the same station or next door. They were usually clear across town and in a city where the maze of streets were congested with horse drawn carts and no traffic signals. And to make matters worse a person would have literally minutes to get from one station to the next to catch the connecting train or risk spending the night in a strange city in some God-forsaken sleazy hotel that the traveler could afford.

Pullman had not yet invented his sleeping cars. In the process a traveler had to put up with crowed, smoke filled passenger coaches which were hot in the summer and freezing in the winter unless you sat next to the open pot-bellied stove which threatened to incinerate everyone in the event of an accident. And accidents were far too common in that era with poor track construction and when the trains weren’t running slow engineers taking the trains to risky speeds. Once at the frontier a person embarked on a whole new set of challenges. People were still traveling to California by wagon train as late as 1869, but the next year everyone was traveling by train to go that far. In good weather a wagon train could go from Independence to Sacramento in three months, but no without hardship (ie the infamous Donner Party).

The only people that went from NY to CA before 1869 where those who planned to live out west. A person could also go by ship or across the Isthmus of Panama. I’ll let you find out how many months those two routes took and the hardships travelers faced on each journey.

3. Your Question: What was the price of transcontinental railroad ticket 1863-1867?

My answer: Who knows and who cares? No, really. I’m not saying this to be mean or sarcastic, but that’s the reaction you would get from one college professor I know who would say “this is pointless trivia.” It’s not substantive. But, there are probably records of this somewhere. You might want to check with a museum or a historical society. You’ll also have to consider inflation and the economics of the 1860s. Also, think about how far the trip is going to be. Is it from the frontier to California? Is it from one town to another only 100 miles away? Or is it from NY to CA? The answer to those three situations would be: a lot, not much, and very expensive. Remember, people didn’t travel unless they had to, and they certainly didn’t go to California unless they wanted to live there. Refer to what I said for question #2 about interchanging with railroads. There wasn’t any one single train that went straight across the country. A person would have to change trains on the same railroad and with other railroads.

A thought just occurred to me while answering this and I think it’s important to bring this up. Don’t ask how many railroads there were at this time or in all of American history. At this time in history you could fill a phone book with railroad names. From then to about the 1950s there were all kinds of railroads imaginable running anywhere and everywhere. It’s only been in the last 50 years railroads have been bankrupt, liquidated, and merged into a 3x5 card size list of new ones.

#4 Your Question: What adventures could you be apart of in the west in 1863-1867?

How do I answer this? How can anybody answer this? It’s not like in the movies. This is a general misconception. This deserves a full answer because it’s not just as simple as looking it up. There’s a new thing going around in the history circles nowadays called revisionist history. Revisionist history is history from the perspective of the common man. They’ve taken diaries or frontiersman citizens and are putting them in the history books and trying to paint a picture from their point of view. Where people lived, how they lived, what they had, what they did, where they went to church, how they worshiped, etc. Before it used to be all about the business and political figures and major events in history.

So I’ll give it to you straight, this is what I’ve come to learn from all the books I’ve read and all the BORING lectures I sat through in college.

Adventures: HA! Do you want the truth or a sugar-coated answer? I'll give you a little bit of both. The answer to this question isn‘t easy to come by. To get a full sense of what the wild west was really like one would have to have had 12th grade level history, a couple of college courses, and hours in various libraries and museums across the country. I have minored in history and my dad is a history/government/civics teacher and we have literally 30 years worth of history books and history videotapes.

"Go west, young man, go west." -Horace Greely. Although that quote came after the 1870s people's fascination with moving west boomed after the civil war. The wild west was from 1865-1893 when the frontier was declared closed. Jesse James was a legend before he was (allegedly) killed (which hasn't been proven yet) thanks to the dime novel. People went west for a better life and got a harder life than what they expected. In 1863 most people living in the fest were mainly farmers and mountain men. Texas and Kansas were official states, Nebraska came a few years later.

But on the plains most people live in sod houses or houses made of buffalo chips, which were also used for fire fuel. Water was unclean, disease was a threat to all children at least 5 and younger, and Indian attacks, although not as common as the movies would have you believe, where factor depending when and where
you were. Ice, snow, rain, heat, and drought were major hardships. People did ride wagons across the plains they mainly walked to California.

People were easy targets alone on the plains and in the mountains. The movies also dramatize this, but it still happened. Just as an example, an ancestor of mine on my dad's side of the family went down to Texas from Kentucky in the 1840s by himself. He left behind a wife a child. He was never heard from again. Now, you can speculate what really happened just as we have, but going to Texas at that time was probably not a good idea. His wife remarried and had more children, but the first child, the girl, is who the rest of our family is related to.

The only real adventure would have been the slaughtering of the bison. Anyone with a gun riding a train across the prairie in this time period could shoot a bison with ease. It was sport that almost wiped the bison into extinction. It was an American Safari, no need to go to Africa. But only the wealthy could afford to spend weeks roaming the plains shooting bison, deer, and bear. The cowboys and the railroad laborers liked gambling, drinking, fighting, and women and not necessarily in that order. That’s the closest to adventure the working man got and there was a good chance that any one of those or a combination could leave a man dead, sick, or injured. The Wild West: it was an adventure all right, although not a pleasant one.

"What was it that the engines said?
Pilots touching head to head
Facing on a single track
Half a world behind each back?"

REFERENCES:

Mark Twain's book "Roughing It" or see the Hallmark movie version of it. It’s about his “adventures” in the west out in and around California.

PBS documentary series "The American Experience: The Iron Road" for the transcontinental railroad, narrated by David McCullough (the narrator in the “Seabiscuit” movie).

Another good tape is one put out by the Reader’s Digest people called “All Aboard: 150 years on the right track.” This chronicles each of the major eras of American railroading from the steam locomotive’s invention right up to today’s freight trains.

Time-Life book series The Old West: The Railroaders and The Old West: The Cowboys.

Westward Expansion by Ray Allen Billington.

Railroads In America by Oliver Jenson.

Golden Spike National Historic Site http://www.utah.com/nationalsites/golden_spike.htm

The Romance and Folklore of North America’s Railroads by Bill Yenne

For an understanding in culture look for:
The Incorporation of America: Culture & Society in the gilded Age by Alan Trachtenberg
And
The Gilded Age or The Hazard of New Functions by Mark Wahlgren Summers

Some of these books and videos I used for research paper on the transcontinental railroad in 1997, even that website. I titled it “Built For A Need Out Of Greed.” That’s another hint of what the railroad was all about. I got an A on the project.

BEWARE of encyclopedias. Use these only to get names, dates, and places and use those keywords to search for materials on the subject.

My challenge to you is, if you want to really understand the first transcontinental railroad, is go look up Theodore “Crazy” Judah and find out why he was so crazy. Another key term is The Big Four and their relation to this Crazy Judah. Also look up Thomas C Durant and Grenville Dodge. What railroad did each one of these men work on? What qualified them to work for the railroad? And then tell me why the ceremony for the completion of the “Iron Road” was almost cancelled. And how did they communicate the message to the country that the last spike had been driven?

For the full answer to everyone one of your questions I’ll try and find some space on my website to post detailed answers. But all the facts that I have given here and will give on my website will not have come directly from any book or video. I reconstructed this mainly from memory, but you’ll find the facts to back up answers in books. The only thing I researched for these answers were the names of some people and those references.

Don’t go and quote me in class as your source being “some guy on the internet.” That’s not gonna work. Take the keywords from this info and go look it up in some books.

The simple answers:

1. Omaha, NE to Sacramento, CA on a completed route and all points in between (go look at a map).
2. A very long time to get from NY to CA.
3. Ticket prices are a mystery, but they were affordable.
4. If by adventure you mean fun, forget it. Life was hard. Only the wealthy could afford adventures like hunting and camping expeditions. Cattle drives were not glamorous, frontier life was very hard and dangerous, and railroad building, well, it could kill you if your coworkers try first. Go read a Mark Twain novel for adventure.

[Anonymous]

Yo yo, you all on dis here site: Don't Be hate'n now! Your gonna Turn Away our new Guests, and fo sho , dawg.. you don't want dat, now do we everyone:

Your Questions, you should try hittin' them up at the lybrary.. smack dat book down, G, and take up some hard-a** reading.

Der Be Lots-a books about Railraods, so don't be worring' hommie.

You can call me "top dog"

T.D.

[Anonymous]

Yo yo, you all on dis here site: Don't Be hate'n now! Your gonna Turn Away our new Guests, and fo sho , dawg.. you don't want dat, now do we everyone:

Your Questions, you should try hittin' them up at the lybrary.. smack dat book down, G, and take up some hard-a** reading.

Der Be Lots-a books about Railraods, so don't be worring' hommie.

You can call me "top dog"

T.D.

[mudchicken]

Ironhorseman:

(1) Ted Judah wasn't crazy, but he was a damned good mudchicken (As was Dodge, Evans, Hills, Palmer & the others that worked or died on that project.)

(2)Enough clues were dropped to choke a horse. (probably a herd)

(3) I am still concerned about the qualifications of the teacher or author of the lesson plan for that kid if the questions were translated verbatim...

(4) Good thing I wasn't reviewing that paper you wrote. Sucking-up to a stereotype ain't gonna get you far bubba. (Greed - Robber Baron crap don't fly here ... you didn't get past the sugarcoating yourself....sounds like you want to prolong the misconception)

I think I just heard Ted judah and Jefferson Davis both roll over in their respective graves.

Iron Feathered Bird w/ Muddy Feet

[mudchicken]

Ironhorseman:

(1) Ted Judah wasn't crazy, but he was a damned good mudchicken (As was Dodge, Evans, Hills, Palmer & the others that worked or died on that project.)

(2)Enough clues were dropped to choke a horse. (probably a herd)

(3) I am still concerned about the qualifications of the teacher or author of the lesson plan for that kid if the questions were translated verbatim...

(4) Good thing I wasn't reviewing that paper you wrote. Sucking-up to a stereotype ain't gonna get you far bubba. (Greed - Robber Baron crap don't fly here ... you didn't get past the sugarcoating yourself....sounds like you want to prolong the misconception)

I think I just heard Ted judah and Jefferson Davis both roll over in their respective graves.

Iron Feathered Bird w/ Muddy Feet

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by kevinstheRRman

Yo yo, you all on dis here site: Don't Be hate'n now! Your gonna Turn Away our new Guests, and fo sho , dawg.. you don't want dat, now do we everyone:

Your Questions, you should try hittin' them up at the lybrary.. smack dat book down, G, and take up some hard-a** reading.

Der Be Lots-a books about Railraods, so don't be worring' hommie.

You can call me "top dog"

T.D.

Kevin, no offence but you're trying too hard. Just be who you are, and let's stop that teen talk. I know i posted something like that, but i don't think monkey boy is happy. (If he is still reading this)

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by kevinstheRRman

Yo yo, you all on dis here site: Don't Be hate'n now! Your gonna Turn Away our new Guests, and fo sho , dawg.. you don't want dat, now do we everyone:

Your Questions, you should try hittin' them up at the lybrary.. smack dat book down, G, and take up some hard-a** reading.

Der Be Lots-a books about Railraods, so don't be worring' hommie.

You can call me "top dog"

T.D.

Kevin, no offence but you're trying too hard. Just be who you are, and let's stop that teen talk. I know i posted something like that, but i don't think monkey boy is happy. (If he is still reading this)

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jhhtrainsplanes

QUOTE: Originally posted by Alaskaman

Jim, i was going to ask the same question... but you were first.

Alex, just endorse that check and mail it to me. I will put it to good use for you. Who knows I might just really need it, there are good indication of a layoff today at work. Hope not, but the aircraft industy is either feast or famine and because of the super bad economy and 9-11 added to the bad economy things in the aircraft field are a little (actually a LOT) screwed up. I hope that tonight when I get back on the computer I can say I still have a job but don't know until I go to work. We have had a layoff about 1 year ago, now it looks like another one is very close at hand. Not a good thing at all.

If anyone is interested I am moving the response to this post to another thread. Just follow the link to see what happened.

http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?page=5&TOPIC_ID=6576

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jhhtrainsplanes

QUOTE: Originally posted by Alaskaman

Jim, i was going to ask the same question... but you were first.

Alex, just endorse that check and mail it to me. I will put it to good use for you. Who knows I might just really need it, there are good indication of a layoff today at work. Hope not, but the aircraft industy is either feast or famine and because of the super bad economy and 9-11 added to the bad economy things in the aircraft field are a little (actually a LOT) screwed up. I hope that tonight when I get back on the computer I can say I still have a job but don't know until I go to work. We have had a layoff about 1 year ago, now it looks like another one is very close at hand. Not a good thing at all.

If anyone is interested I am moving the response to this post to another thread. Just follow the link to see what happened.

http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?page=5&TOPIC_ID=6576