With today ’s green taking us across the United States in just six or seven hours , it is very hard to imagine travel in the mid-1800s . Let ’s just say it was arduous . Getting from New York to California in 1860 could be a half - year affair need a number of different trains to get to the Mississippi River , and then sawhorse - drawn wagons across the plain and over the mountains . The journeying was fraught with peril – everything from Indians to weather to robber to wild animals could induce insurmountable problems .
So when they put the " gilded spike " into the last piece of track of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10 , 1869 , it seemed like a miracle . There was an electric reaction to the news all across the country . in the end you could imagine going from New York to California in a calendar week rather than six month , and the risks fall significantly as well .
The whole idea of building the Transcontinental Railroad move from phantasy to world during the organisation of Abraham Lincoln . Lots of federal dollars die into this project come out in 1862 with the Pacific Railway Act . The whole project unfold from Omaha , Nebraska to Sacramento , California over 1,800 geographical mile of running . It took about six twelvemonth to ramp up the Transcontinental Railroad and the golden spike was hammer into the undercoat on May 10 , 1869 . Then , in 1872 , a bridge circuit across the Missouri River gave the U.S. a single line of track run from coast to coast . By 1876 , a power train had bunk from NY to California in less than 90 hours .
The engineering needed to build the railway line was impressive for the metre . prole had to assemble wooden trestle bridge , blasttunnelsthrough mountains , ground level hundred of miles of track bed and actually lay the crossties and track . And do n’t forget the logistics of moving so much equipment , citizenry , food , tools , alloy and wood to a construction website hundreds of statute mile aside . There was a full stop where the construction squad had become so effective that they could lay 10 sea mile of track in one day . The development of all that technology , along with the existence of the backbone track , caused a railroad track blowup . Over 100,000 international nautical mile of raceway was laid across the United States , in the next 20 geezerhood .
It choose nearly a century to find the modern replacement for the railroads . In 1959 , American Airlines offer the res publica its first regular spirt inspection and repair fly non - discontinue across the country on 707s .
For more information about the Transcontinental Railroad and bear on theme , check out these links :
