Transcontinental Railroad

Get the book "Nothing Like It In The World" by the late Stephen E. Ambrose. It is the story of the men who built the transcontinental railroad 1863-1869.

Thanks Hot Water, will look tonight at our local second hand bookstore for this book or check my library (cheapskate that I am!)

Yes, Ambrose's book is excellent. A great recommendation. It covers more of the literal "nuts and bolts" and technical aspects about the building of the transcontinental railroad. Another book to consider is "The Big Four". Most of the graft was on the UP side with Durant and the Credit Mobilier. Huntington was a wheeler dealer and a very shrewd businessman. Stanford loved the limelight and was very good at entertaining in his private car. All the government loans were paid back. But you need to read the books! Have fun.

another endorsement for the Stephen Ambrose book. Best material on the people and circumstances of building the TransCon I have ever read.

plus it is a truly well written story.

Read it with caution Ambrose got very fast and loose with the facts in this and a number of other books:

http://hnn.us/articles/541.html

http://hnn.us/articles/504.html

http://cprr.org/Museum/Books/Comments-Ambrose.html

A front page article published in The Sacramento (CA) Bee on January 1, 2001, entitled Area Historians Rail Against Inaccuracies in Book,[38] listed more than sixty instances identified as "significant errors, misstatements, and made-up quotes" in Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869,

Ambrose's non-academic popular history published in August, 2000, about the construction of the Pacific Railroad between Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska via Sacramento, California and the San Francisco Bay at Alameda/Oakland which were documented in a detailed December, 2000, fact checking paper compiled by three long time Western US railroad historians, researchers, consultants, and collectors who specialize in the Pacific Railroad and related topics