Transcontinental Railroad (Essay Sample)

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Transcontinental Railroad
This paper will explain about how the transcontinental railroad was constructed, the challenges en-counted during the construction period and the man power. Transcontinental railroad is a connection of several railroads with a common border that have terminals situated in continental borders or oceans. The first transcontinental railroad was constructed between the year 1863 and 1869 and it was 3069km long. It was to connect between the western United States and the pacific coast at San Francisco Bay with parts of eastern U.S rail network at low and council bluff on the sides of Missouri River. This railway network open up the interior parts of the continent for trade and commerce, settlement and infrastructure development. It enhanced free and fast movement of traders and other people from one place to another and this reduced transportation cost of goods and services. The three private companies that constructed this transcontinental railroad were western pacific railroad company, central pacific railroad company and union pacific railroad company. Each company constructed a portion of the railway network depending on the place the company had been located.
The construction of transcontinental railroad had been a long time awaited dream that had been conceived back in the early 1832 by Dr. Hartwell Carver (Ambrose 314). He final proposed its construction when he presented his ideas to the congress in 1847. Implementing these ideas were not an easy task, the private companies that built it had to en-counter a number of challenges. The vastness of America terrain made it difficult for these companies to identify the routes the transcontinental railroad would pass through. They had to invest in human personal with expertise that would identify the exact routes for the railway network to pass through, for example they had to hire scientists, surveyors and artists. These construction companies faced laborer shortage especially in places that were sparsely populated, for example the Central Pacific Railroad en-countered terrible shortage of works and also the worker it recruited did have experience. Lack of suitable land to build the southern transcontinental railroad network made Gadsden to come up with a plan to buy land from Mexico in 1853 that could provide a suitable terrain for the construction of southern railroad network. The company that contracted the Panama Rail Road experienced several obstacles, for example the workers were affected by the cold climatic condition in the rain forest and diseases like malaria and cholera. The terrain was also not favorable since the topography was mountainous. The company had also to look for workers from around the globe and getting them was the biggest challenge since most of them feared the harsh climatic conditions in the rain forest environment.
These companies faced labor shortage. For example the central pacific company experienced shortage of semi skilled labor and it had to depend on the blacks to offer semi skilled services.
The Union Pacific Railroad Company encountered challenges in obtaining financial support and the civil war hindered it from getting worker since most of the people were taking part in the civil war. It also experience shortage of construction materials since there was no channel to connect between Council Bluffs and Nebraska as the railroad was still under construction. They were forced to sell their four locomotives and this totally delayed them from starting the construction of the railroad. The construction of the Transcontinental Railroad was also hindered by the civil wars, due to the war some railroads networks which had been already constructed were destroyed and they had to be reconstructed and this caused railroads supplies prices to hike
The Union Pacific private company recruited its laborer to construct the railway network from Army veterans, engineering college students and Irish immigrants. The army veterans had a lot of experience which they had acquired during the American civil war when they were working as US military Railroad. This task...