The railroad is a symbol of great engineering feats and is part of America's beginning love story with technology. Trains still fire up the imagination. No wonder, as the construction of railways changed our world entirely (see our book review on The Forever Street by Frederic Morton).

One of the most amazing accomplishments in railroading is the building of the Union and Central Pacific Transcontinental Railroad Line. It was one of the crowning achievements of Abraham Lincoln, completed four months after his death. The railroad was built almost entirely "with bare hands and coordinated skill." Ground breaking for this engineering challenge began at a ceremony held in Sacramento, California, on January 8, 1863.

The building of the railway required enormous feats of engineering and labor in the crossing of plains and high mountains. The Central Pacific Railroad was built mainly by Chinese immigrant laborers who laid 690 miles (1,110 km) of track, starting in Sacramento, California. The Union Pacific Railroad was comprised of 1,087 miles (1,749 km) of track, starting in Council Bluffs Nebraska, and was built mainly by Irish laborers. The entire project took about six years to complete.

Officials and workers of the Union and Central Pacific railways met on Promontory Summit, in Utah Territory to drive in the Golden Spike on May 10, 1869. This spike symbolized completion of the first transcontinental railroad, an event which joined the nation from coast to coast and reduced a journey of six or more months to just one week. Completion of the transcontinental railway revolutionized the population and economy of the American West. It served as a vital link for trade, commerce and travel, joining the eastern and western halves of the late 19th Century United States.

The ceremonious Golden Spike connecting the two completed railway lines was driven in at a crowded ceremony by the Honorable Leland Stanford. It is now located at Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University. In perhaps the world's first live virtual mass-media event, the hammers blows were wired over the telegraph line so that each hammer stroke would be heard as a click at telegraph stations nationwide. Due to the crowds crushing around Stanford, he missed many of the hammer strokes, but the telegraph operator transmitted the clicks anyway. As soon as the ceremonial spike had been replaced by an ordinary iron spike, a message was transmitted to both the East Coast and West Coast that simply read, "DONE." The country erupted in celebration upon receipt of this message.

To learn more about this interesting engineering feat and the changes it made to history, you might enjoy reading Transcontinental Railroad: The Gateway to the West by Edward J. Renehan Jr.; Nothing Like It In the World : The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 by Stephen E. Ambrose; Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad by David Hayward Bain; and Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroads by Dee Brown.