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FAQ's (Page 1 of  2)

Also see the CPRR Discussion Group
"A little after 2 o'clock, Monday last, the telegraph noted the final completion of
the grandest undertaking of modern times, that of laying 1776 miles of
continuous rail ... uniting the Atlantic to the Pacific ... "
Wellsville Free Press (NY newspaper), May 12, 1869.
     Sponsored Link
Stereoscope
Richard 6x13 cm Stereo Transparency Viewer
Beautiful wooden stereo viewer with rack and pinion focusing, adjustable
eyepieces and ground glass.  Courtesy Adorama Camera.
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"If it is ever built, it will be the work of giants." —William Tecumseh Sherman, writing to his brother

"In a railroad to the Pacific we have a great national work, transcending, in its magnitude, and in its results, anything yet attempted by man." —Henry V. Poor, Editor, American Railroad Journal, 1858

Quick Answers:

Where did the first transcontinental railroad originate and end?  How long was the railroad?
The 1,776 mile long first transcontinental railroad (690 miles built by the Central Pacific Railroad and 1,086 miles built by the Union Pacific Railroad) that started construction in 1863 and was completed with the joining of the rails at Promontory Summit, Utah on May 10, 1869 went from Omaha, Nebraska (UPRR) to Sacramento, California (CPRR), thereby connecting with other railroads from the east (for example, from Boston and New York via Chicago, Illinois or St. Louis, Missouri) to span the continent by rail from the east coast to the west coast for the first time. (Also see more about rail travel routes from NY to Chicago, and from Chicago to Omaha.) After the junction of the UPRR with the CPRR was changed to Ogden, Utah, 52 1/2 miles east of Promontory Summit, the CPRR was 742 miles long, extending from Sacramento to Ogden, and the UPRR was 1,032 miles long, extending from Ogden to Omaha.  Sheet Music CoverSoon thereafter, the route was extended from Council Bluffs, Iowa (on the eastern shore, just across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska) to San Francisco, California, as the Western Pacific Railroad west from Sacramento (merging with the CPRR of California on June 22, 1870 or in August, 1870) became part of the Central Pacific along with ferry service carrying whole trains on the world's largest ferries replaced the boat trip from Sacramento on Sacramento River Steamboats.  Charles Nordhoff wrote in the May, 1872 issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine:

"The regular route runs from New York [via Ferry to Jersey City], by way of Philadelphia and Pittsburg, to Chicago — this is called the [Pennsylvania Railroad's] Pittsburg and Fort Wayne road — thence to Omaha, either by the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, the Chicago and Northwestern, or the Chicago and Rock Island.  At Omaha you take the Union Pacific road to Ogden, and thence the Central Pacific to San Francisco.  If you wish to see Colorado on your way out, you may go also from Chicago to Denver, over the Chicago, Burlington, and Missouri and the Kansas Pacific roads .... "

CPRR - UPRR Timetable Map, 1881
CPRR–UPRR Timetable Map, showing railroad land grants, Rand McNally, 1881 (verso, detail). Courtesy Bruce C. Cooper Collection.

"August 14 [1869]: Reached Promontory ... at noon. A fearful place composed almost entirely of open gambling booths and whiskey shops. They tell one someone is killed here nearly every day. One of our passengers fleeced of all he had by the gamblers. Glad to get away after about two hours stay. Weather warm."
—From the Diary of Henry Carter Austin, August, 1869.
Courtesy National Park Service and Grandson David B. Austin.
Silvis. Promontory

 

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Click here for PERMISSIONS and HOMEWORK requests.

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For Kids. Image courtesy National Park Service.HOMEWORK:  I'm a student and my parent/teacher wants me to use the CPRR Museum to do a school project.  How do I get pictures for my homework assignment? Is there anything I can print for a school project?
Students can click here to get instant permission to use our printer friendly "Favorite Homework Pictures" pages to choose pictures, make them the size they want, and print them for school projects. [Students have won local, state, and national awards in the National History Day competition using pictures and information from the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum.]

"I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did." —Yogi Berra

TEACHERS:  Many elementary education curricula include study of the transcontinental railroad in the 4th grade.  What TCRR lesson plans and other educational resources are available for school teachers?
See our website's "Great Railroad Race" Interactive Railroad Project (a classroom game for school kids) located at <http://CPRR.org/Game> which has a teacher's notes page, with linked math problem set, questions for the CPRR and UPRR teams, and a final skit. Also see the:

Other links that we have found to be of particular interest to teachers are about the Chinese RR workers, history readings, and instant permission for students to use favorite homework pictures. Also see the Children's Train History Project.

"The last great innovation to transform classroom instruction occurred during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson: the invention of the chalkboard, around 1801."

"As long as there are tests there will be prayer in public schools." —Anonymous

"Too much is plenty!" —Benjamin Cohen, c. 1952

"Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own." —Mark Twain

"Too much of a good thing is great." —Mae West

How is the CPRR Museum organized?
This website is very large and growing (more than about 5,000 web pages, 12,500 files, 70,000 links, including more than 11,000 external links, more than 1,000 discussion topics, 150 books, and 5,000 megabytes, most available for public viewing) with a terrific heavily used (>1 terrabytes/year) on-line library of 19th century pictures (more than 4,500), maps and descriptions of railroad construction and travel from more than 250 collections — but, as the Sitemap outlines, it follows a simple, commonly used style with three main pages:

1Welcome page>> 2Home page>>
 

>> 3Exhibits index page>> ...Favorite Stereoviews Exhibit page

Frequently Asked Questions (where you are now) and offsite Links pages are also provided, and numerous text links cross reference related topics.  Navigation is assisted by a navigation bar (tan, see above) showing the most important links, with a search feature, and a pull down menu outlining the site.

Chronological organization is provided as timelines, a construction chronology, the ordering of articles about building the railroad, within the webpages of the introduction, as well as by the on-line Southern Pacific Bulletin magazine's chronological account of the railroad and in Galloway's book, Regrettably, the historic photographs were not dated, so a precisely chronological exhibit of them is not possible, although Hart's stereoview numbering may provide a rough approximation. We also have a reorganized catalog of Hart's views arranged by location or organized by Stanford Album Geographic Sequence Number. The next FAQ has much additional information about how to search and navigate the CPRR Museum.

We've tried to tell the story of the Pacific Railroad in human terms with lots of exhibits and first person accounts that visitors can relate to.  It is true that the railroad was finished in 1869, long before the 1876 deadline set in the Pacific Railroad Act which Congress passed in 1862, but nobody thought it was going to be easy.  Most "experts" in fact thought it was impossible.  It was only by dint of the hard work of people like L.M. Clement and the determination of the men who risked all to finance it that it got done.  It was a truly "American" story of accomplishment by a can do, free people in charge of their own destiny.

"I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it." —Mae West
 

Alert

HELP TO KEEP THIS WEBSITE OPEN

Please ask first before taking pictures from this website.  No pirating!  Please don't jeopardize the CPRR Museum website's continued existence. Donors won't allow us to show their valuable pictures online if they are being stolen.  (Although not typical, Alex Novak reports that "a washed-out faded printing, Andrew Russell’s Meeting of the Rails, the Golden Spike in stereo brought a record price of $21,850 at a Swann Auction in April, 1998.") All content of the CPRR Museum website is Copyright ©  1999-2008 by CPRR.org and may not be copied or republished without permission.

Pirated copy of Reilly #215
Pirated copy of J.J. Reilly stereoview #215 "Eastern Bound Tea Train at Blue Canon, C. P. R. R., Cal."  Pirated images were also a problem in the 19th century!  This is a poor reproduction with the title showing the wrong railroad.  Reilly's photography business failed and he committed suicide.  Image Courtesy William Jaeger.

"one day, materials that aren't searchable online simply won't get read" —attributed to James Hilton, librarian at the University of Michigan

"You could look it up." —Casey Stengel

Is there an index to the CPRR Museum? What navigation aids are available?
Yes, there are several:

A pulldown menu that outlines this website (requires Javascript) is also included on the navigation bar (tan, see above):

HOME  |  EXHIBITS  |  PHOTO CATALOGS  | BOOKS  |  BIOGRAPHY  | MAPS  |  ENGRAVINGS  |  FAQ's  |  SITE MAP  |  LINKS  |  E-MAIL  |  WHAT'S NEW


"we pass through this world but once, so do now any good
you can do, and show now any kindness you can show, for we shall not pass this way
again." —William Penn

How do you pay for the upkeep of this web site?
We rely on donations and as well have some sponsors of the site, which include a great site for digital cameras, Digital Camera HQ, and a related site for a number of categories of consumer electronics, DigitalAdvisor.com.

"The mark of a well educated person is not necessarily in knowing all the answers, but in knowing where to find them." —Douglas Everett.

Pop-up Captions
– Pop-up Image Caption –

Where can I find the captions for the images?
Stereoview images typically have captions printed below the right image, or sometimes on the verso (back of the card). Many images on this website have pop-up captions, but we regret that our software isn't yet up to the task of placing captions with every stereoview image. However, all of the captions as published in the 19th century are available in our image catalogs which are arranged by photographer/publisher listed in order by the view numbers. On our welcome, home, and exhibits index pages, image titles should pop-up if you point to each image with the cursor and then hold it still (see above image showing a pop-up caption on the image).

"Nobody on his deathbed ever said,'I wish I'd spent more time at the office.'" —Paul Tsongas

How can I help?
We are volunteer retired educators, and the CPRR Museum depends entirely on private funding. We hope that you have enjoyed visiting our website and will express your appreciation by clicking to make a gift:

Be a part of railroad history.Great American Railroad Route Poster
Support CPRR.org!
Support CPRR.org!

Where can I read more about the first transcontinental railroad?
See the on-line readings, book list, and links to related websites.

Some excellent recent books are available at the Museum Bookshop:

WarningOne railroad historian warns that books containing any of the following fables (contradicted by all available first person reports) are unreliable and cannot be recommended: at Promontory Stanford supposedly swung at the spike and missed [but see Alexander Toponce's autobiography which confirms this tale]; at Cape Horn Chinese supposedly swung in baskets; claims that there were thousands of railroad construction fatalities; claims that more than 2 workers were killed at Tunnel 6 (the summit tunnel); claims that workers were killed by poor use of nitroglycerine.

Search available antiquarian books:  Transcontinental Railroad, Pacific Railroad, Pacific Tourist, and Pacific Tourist Railroad Guidebooks.
Search the world's bookstores for any antiquarian books using Chambal, Bookfinder, AddAll (or ABEBooks which is included in the others).
Search the electronic catalogs of Academic Research Libraries.

Book Search Tips:

Note: Google has also announced (December, 2004) agreements with major research libraries to publish the full text of their book collections online over the next six years, including all eight million books at Stanford University and all seven million at the University of Michigan. Additional material will come from the Harvard and Oxford University Libraries and the New York Public Library. Search results for copyrighted books will be limited to short excerpts. Some historic books relating to the Central Pacific Railroad are already available online via the Google Library Project.

Television documentaries are available on videotape.

For general information, visit the University of Connecticut Library's page on Sources for Railroad History Research in the United States. Also see History Matters: Making Sense of Evidence.and Andrew Smith's Railroad Pathfinder.

Also see the railroad message forums at the CPRR Discussion Group, RailServe Train Talk, Trainorders Western Railroad Forum, Railway Preservation News - Interchange, or Trainboard, and the antique photography discussions at the Old Photo Forum, or use Google (formerly DejaNews) to search Usenet postings relating to the transcontinental railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad.

You can also join the Railroad & Locomotive Historical Society, where you can participate in the members-only Internet discussion group (where your research question might be answered by one of the nation's leading scholars in the field), and receive a subscription to Railroad History, the oldest railroad journal in North America.

A few of the links on this page are Easter Eggs — Can you find them?

"If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research." —Wilson Mizner

I'm writing a report for homework at school.  I need to cite your website in my bibliography – how should the citation appear? How do I get homework pictures?
Author: CPRR.org
Title: Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum.
URL: <http://CPRR.org>
MLA format:
[Substitute today's date.]		 CPRR.org. Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum. 31 Jan. 2004 <http://CPRR.org>
Note: Please use the above formal citation (or a narrative equivalent) rather than an acknowledgment of any individual.

"Better here than in Philadelphia." —not on the gravestone of William Claude Dukenfield

"That's Inter-City Rail for you. ... I'm a qualified brain surgeon.  I only do this because I like being my own boss."
—Monty Python's Flying Circus (The Dead Parrot)

Can I visit the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum?
You're there now!  This is a virtual museum in cyberspace. [Please note that CPRR.org is not located in MoorvilleMoorvilleMoorville, Kansas; and, fortunately, we don't suffer from a common museum malady, the "edifice complex."]  We are deeply honored to have the author of what the Wall Street Journal called the "definitive" history of the building of the US transcontinental railroad describe the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum as "the best RR website on the planet."  The photographs, maps, documents, readings and other items displayed on this website are physically scattered in various locations around the United States, in more than 250 collections.  Many are too delicate to handle.  The photographs are also small (most measure 3 1/2") and light sensitive.  The restored and enlarged digital images presented here are often much easier to see than the original!  (Due to the ravages of age and technical factors, each image has typically required extensive restoration and modification using digital tools to eliminate defects and achieve what we believe is the most esthetic and historically accurate rendition of each picture.  Skillfully performing such magical transformations by digital image restoration requires considerable subjective judgment, artistry, originality, and creativity, as well as technology. (Arthur C. Clarke, the famous science fiction writer once remarked that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.")  We are most grateful to contributors who may have lavished hours of ingenuity on a single image to create apparent perfection from a seriously flawed original.  Where it all began.MoorvilleFor example, it is often feasible to improve color and contrast, modify brightness, remove stains, and recreate missing or damaged portions.  We want you to be aware that the images on this website consequently are not the "exact" copies which many image archives prefer, and consequently caution researchers to compare original images when appropriate.)  The CPRR Photographic History Museum is a family website that has been expanded with the help of people with similar interests who have submitted scans of railroad images and copies of 19th century articles and maps from their collections. Your contributions are welcome.

"... the most magnificent project ever conceived." —Theodore D. Judah, 1857

What did the Chinese do when they finished working on the Transcontinental Railroad?
"With the completion of the Central Pacific, many Chinese workers moved to other railroad construction jobs, including some for the Central Pacific. Others returned with their savings to their families in Canton. Others still sent to China for wives and settled in various western communities as laundrymen and restaurateurs. The majority who remained, however, returned to the Pacific Coast." Some continued building railroads, for example, the line from northern to southern California via the San Joaquin Valley. Others became miners or worked in a variety of service trades.  Many Chinese were employed by the CPRR at Rocklin’s roundhouse, and approximately 1,000 built water courses and stone fences at the Whitney Ranch near Rocklin. "In December 1869, the Central Pacific launched the construction of a line down the San Joaquin Valley.  By 1872 the railhead had reached Goshen.  Subsequently, construction of the section from Goshen on south to Los Angeles was turned over to the Southern Pacific which had been acquired by the Central Pacific in 1870." "The 1870 federal census listed about 400 Chinese in Truckee and Boca Post Office." The Sacramento Yee Fow Museum proposal states about the Chinese CPRR workers that "most of them later settled in Sacramento's China Slough."

"Trestles & Snowsheds: the Sierras ... February, 1867, I went on the Central Pacific Railroad to build bridges on the Truckee River. I was still in debt. ... I worked all Summer at a good salary and sometime in November when I was raising a bridge at the Cascades above Cisco and had it nearly completed I accidentally made a misstep and fell from the top, a distance of fifty feet, breaking six ribs and injuring my shoulder and spine. I was unconscious until the next day and was not able to walk for nearly two months. ... The next Spring I went back to Cisco on the Central Pacific and got up plans for a machine to frame timber for the snow-sheds. In March went down the Truckee to the State line and had a gang of men getting out ties for the railroad. In May moved the gang to Cold Stream, above Truckee, and made ties until the first of June. I then got orders to go to Sacramento and have my machine built at the Company's shops. I had my machine finished by the 20th of June and shipped it up to Summit Valley. Put in a side track, where the snow was still four feet deep and soon got the machine in good working order. With six handy men it would do the work of fifty carpenters. In July I commenced putting up snow sheds and by the middle of December had completed six miles of snow shed at the summit of Sierra Nevada Mountains. At one time I had a very narrow escape. In going down to Truckee with my construction train we had a collision with a freight train coming up just opposite Donner Lake. I was on the engine, sitting on the firemans side. The trains got so close before any alarm could be given that they could not slacken speed until they collided. I was thrown headlong against the door of the fire box and all the wood from the tender on top of me. I soon crawled out and found the Engineer and Fireman both bleeding, the Locomotives smashed up, steam flying all around, the cars off the track, several men badly hurt and everything in confusion. The only injury I sustained was a slightly sprained wrist and some scratches on my head from the wood piling on me. One man who jumped off the train on some wood fractured his scull so that it caused his death. About the middle of December 1868, having completed my section of sheds, the Company wanted me to move to an uncovered section opposite the lower end of Donner Lake and put up two miles more of snowshed, which I declined, as the ground was now covered with snow and it was getting quite cold and disagreeable and would be no better before the next May. ..."
—James Abram Kleiser (1818 – 1906), autobiography ... hand-written in 1885. Courtesy Harry A. Kleiser & the Cloverdale Historical Society.

How much did it cost to ride the train?

Ten Dollar Gold Eagle Coin, 1869. Courtesy Heritage Rare Coin Galleries.
Ten Dollar Gold Eagle Coin, 1869. Courtesy Heritage Rare Coin Galleries.

 

"It is perfect insanity, or the next step to it, for any one to indulge in further discussion about the feasibility of a railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific Coast at the present time ... If Congress had common sense, they would not discuss such a subject ... " —Horace Greeley, 1848

Earth from Space. Courtesy NASA.

"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." —Lewis Metzler Clement

What were the obstacles and hardships faced in building the first transcontinental railroad?

In his 1873 book, California for Health, Pleasure, And Residence: A Book for Travellers and Settlers, Charles Nordhoff described these obstacles:

" ... these five Sacramento merchants, who undertook to build a railroad through eight hundred miles of an almost uninhabited country, over mountains and across an alkali desert, were totally unknown to the great money world; Blizzardthat their project was pronounced impracticable by engineers of reputation testifying before legislative committees; that it was opposed and ridiculed at every step by the moneyed men of San Francisco; that even in their own neighborhood they were thought sure to fail; and the 'Dutch Flat Swindle,' as their project was called, was caricatured, written down in pamphlets, abused in newspapers, spoken against by politicians, denounced by capitalists, and for a long time held in such ill repute that it was more than a banker's character for prudence was worth to connect himself with it, even by subscribing for its stock. Nor was this all. Not only had credit to be created for the enterprise against all these difficulties, but when money was raised, the material for the road — the iron, the spikes, the tools to dig, the powder to blast, the locomotives, the cars, the machinery, every thing — had to be shipped from New York around Cape Horn, to make an expensive and hazardous eight months' voyage, before it could be landed in San Francisco, and had then to be reshipped one hundred and twenty miles to Sacramento by water. Not a foot of iron was laid on the road on all the eight hundred miles to Ogden, not a spike was driven, not a dirt-car was moved, nor a powder-blast set off, that was not first brought around Cape Horn; and at every step of its progress the work depended upon the promptness with which all this material was shipped for a sea-voyage of thousands of miles around Cape Horn. Men, too, as well as material had to be obtained from a great distance. California, thinly populated, with wages very high at that time, could not supply the force needed. Laborers were obtained from New York, from the lower country, and finally ten thousand Chinese were brought over the Pacific Ocean, and their patient toil completed the work."

" ... the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data.' " —Jon "Hannibal" Stokes

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." —Albert Einstein

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored." —Aldous Huxley

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." —Nobel laureate Richard Feynman

"Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said: 'one ca'n't believe impossible things.'
'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.' " —Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

"The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic." —John F. Kennedy

"It ain't what a man don't know as makes him a fool, but what he does know as ain't so." —Josh Billings

"Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it." —Andre Gide

"History is a myth that men agree to believe." —Napoleon

"Every person has two reasons for everything he does—a good reason and the real reason." —J.P. Morgan

What are some common incorrect rumors, errors, or myths about the Central Pacific Railroad?
Flying Spaghetti MonsterThe rails were joined on May 10, 1869 (not May 8th as engraved on the golden spike) at Promontory Summit, Utah, north of the Great Salt Lake, NOT at Promontory Point, but correcting this may be a lost cause as Promontory Summit was often called Promontory or Promontory Point in 1869. (Promontory Point at the southern rocky tip of a peninsula jutting southward into the lake from its northern shore, 30 miles farther south [ ... and the confusion gets worse! – with the Lucin cutoff, the railroad was moved South decades later to go through Promontory Point and across the Great Salt Lake on a causeway, not North around the Lake through Promontory Summit as it originally did – and early maps show yet a third abandoned route South around the Lake as originally planned, but not as built]).  There were several gold and silver ceremonial spikes that would have been squashed if hit with a sledgehammer (and matching laurel wood last tie with predrilled holes for these spikes), but the actual last spike was iron, and it is disputed whether Stanford and Durant really did swing and miss, but there is a first hand account that confirms this tale. "It was the tappng of an ordinary iron hammer in the hands of Governor Leland Stanford on an ordinary iron spike that formed the electric contact which flashed the telegraphic message over the country, May 10, 1869, that the last link had been made in the rail lines of the first transcontinental railroad." The golden last spike wasn't stolen in the 19th century, it was donated to the Stanford University Museum, but the spike there now apparently does not match photographs of the original gold spike donated by David Hewes.   There are a number of other often repeated stories and factual details about the CPRR that are probably untrue.  For example, claims of "thousands killed" in construction accidents appear likely to be greatly exaggerated (for example, there were no more than two fatalities in building the summit tunnel – nitroglycerine made on site was used there with surprising safety),  and the Chinese workers who came to California (they called San Francisco "Old Gold Mountain") were lured by the gold rush and recruited by advertisements, experienced considerable anti-Chinese sentiment and discrimination, but no Chinese CPRR workers were ever slaughtered following completion of the CPRR to avoid paying them (perhaps a rumor resulting from confusion with the 1871 Los Angeles riot, the expulsion of Chinese lumbermen from Truckee, 1878-86 [with the railroad interests apparently resisting and eventually switching to coal to boycott the whites] or the 1885 Rock Springs, Wyoming Massacre of Chinese miners), and they were not "slave laborers" like many of the "coolies" sent to South America and the Caribbean in earlier generations, and did most of the labor in building the CPRR, for which they were paid in gold coin; it is not true that no photograph taken at Promontory on May 10, 1869 showed Chinese workers; nor that the Chinese workers were excluded from the celebrations at Promontory – in fact the San Francisco Newsletter, reported on May 15th, 1869 that "J.H. Strobridge, when the work was all over, invited the Chinese who had been brought over from Victory for that purpose, to dine at his boarding car. When they entered, all the guests and officers present cheered them as the chosen representatives of the race which have greatly helped to build the road ... a tribute they well deserved and which evidently gave them much pleasure."; Bloomer Cut was not named after the bloomer costume (19th century ladies' trousers);  the "Big Four" were actually five in number (brother E.B. Crocker who had a stroke just after the completion of the railroad is often forgotten) and got very rich only after taking on enormous personal financial risk and years of herculean labors — various government authorized bonds (which had to be repaid) were issued only after demonstrated construction accomplishment, but the government did not subsidize the construction, except by providing land grants which consisted in the west mostly of almost worthless and unsaleable arid land (any later value to the CPRR of a small portion of these granted lands was largely the result of the successful railroad construction and similarly benefited the U.S. government which retained ownership of the half of the checkerboard land parcels that were not granted to the railroad);  there were no wicker baskets on the ends of the ropes used to lower the Chinese workers down the (non-vertical) slope at Cape Horn to blast a ledge (the origin of this wicker basket fable has been meticulously documented);  the UPRR Irish and CPRR Chinese workers who never even worked near one another in Utah (where Mormon contractors were used by both railroads) didn't try to blow up one another, the crew that laid ten miles of track in one day near Promontory Summit, Utah, was not entirely Chinese (the names of the 8 Irish tracklayers are known);  and, CPRR Chief Engineer Theodore Judah who became ill on board ship from Panama to New York City probably died of typhoid fever, not yellow fever.  Jules Verne includes a journey on the CPRR in his novel "Around the World in Eighty Days" (Chapter 26) but in describing the passage across the Sierra Nevada mountains includes the misinformation that "There were few or no bridges or tunnels on the route." [ ... and don't get us started on the brontosaurus.] So don't believe everything that you read in the newspaper or urban legends on the internet. It would be a bad pun to consider 1776 miles of track as the ultimate irony. Also see the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest, 1957 which may be of especial interest to pastafarians.

"Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt." —Abraham Lincoln (some say Mark Twain)

Did you know that actor Edwin Thomas Booth "saved the life of Robert Lincoln, son of the president, by grabbing him by his coat collar as he fell in the gap between two moving passenger cars and hauling him to safety," in March 1865, a month before Edwin's brother assassinated the boy's father. —TheUnion.com

What institutions not affiliated with the CPRR Museum also have collections of transcontinental railroad photographs?
The CPRR Museum provides convenient access to a large number of artistically restored historic images – unrestored transcontinental railroad images are also available from a number of other sources:

Also see the on-line Appendix D of Mead Kibbey's book – republished on this website – The (364) Railroad Photographs of Alfred A. Hart, Artist.