1868: Across the Desert

June 18, 1868
The first passenger train crosses the Sierras, arriving in Reno, Nevada.

August, 1868
Mormon laborers do grading work through the Utah desert.

Runaway Train!

"The line we want now is the one we can build the soonest, even if we rebuild immediately."
-- engineer Samuel Montague, instructing a surveyor

Forged in Eastern iron works and shipped West around the tip of South America, construction supplies traveled a perilous route to the work sites where they were urgently needed. Supply ships sunk. Supply trains crashed as they raced from Sacramento to the end of the track and back, hauling hundreds of tons of rails, spikes and other material.

By 1868, fifty-one CP locomotives carried freight and passengers on a single track. Delays or accidents could be deadly. Stopped trains could be sitting around the bend -- unknown death traps. In order to arrest a train's mighty momentum, the engineer would blow a one-whistle signal, cueing two brakemen to tie down each car's hand brakes. The brakemen started atop cars at opposite ends of the train, turning the brake on each car then leaping five or six feet to the next, until they met in the middle. Stopping a train could take half a mile or more.

Work Crews

"Water was scarce after leaving the Truckee and Humboldt Rivers... There was not a tree that would make a board on over 500 miles of the route, no satisfactory quality of building stone. The country afforded nothing."
-- surveyor Lewis Clement

"The operators & laborers all rejoice -- all work freer & with more spirit -- even the Chinamen partake of our joy. I believe they do five or ten per cent more work per day now that we are through the granite rock work & can trot along toward Salt Lake..."
-- railroad executive Mark Hopkins

The work force was spread out over several miles. At the forefront were the surveyors. Next came the graders and the telegraph crew, just ahead of the actual rail laying. At the end of the laid track, workers unloaded wagons of rail. Gaugers set the tracks in place, followed by spikers and bolters who affixed the rails together. Camps for thousands of men -- workshops, offices, bunks, food supplies --advanced half a dozen miles each day through the desert.