by Tim Slessor
Far away, on the other side of the continental divide, the Union Pacific had not long celebrated its first 500 miles; it was now working west from a Hell-on-Wheels called Cheyenne. Within months, this makeshift scatter of shacks, tents and muddy roads would become the capital of Wyoming Territory. But right now, once the sun went down, it was still “a bibulous bacchanalia of booze and bawds”.
***
Today in downtown Cheyenne, just across from the Union Pacific depot (dee-poh please), there stands a giant black locomotive. It sits on rails which do not go anywhere; it could do with some paint, and its firebox has been cold for nearly 50 years, but it is still quite magnificent. It and its 24 brothers (sadly, all but two have apparently long gone to the scrapyard) were designed in 1940; their primary task was to haul freight trains up and over Sherman Summit, a job they did for almost two decades. In that direct and attractive way that Americans often have, the locomotives were always referred to as the Big Boys. They were almost certainly the largest and most powerful steam locomotives ever built, and therefore, if size and power are the criteria, they must surely have represented the ultimate development of steam locomotion. I once met, all too briefly, a man who had crewed one of these glorious machines; I think there were tears in his eyes. There is reportedly just one Big Boy left in semi-working trim, at a place in New Hampshire called Steamtown.
Some details for enthusiasts: the Big Boys had a wheel pattern of 4-8-8-4. Not including the tender, they weighed 344 tons and had mechanical stokers for a 150 cubic ft grate. Working pressure was 300 lbs/sq. in. with an evaporating surface of 5,755 sq. ft plus a super-heating surface of 2,043 sq. ft. They had four cylinders of 24 in. by 32 in. driving sixteen 5 ft 8in. coupled wheels. Maximum tractive power was about 135,400 lbs. There are no official figures for horsepower, but estimates put it at about 9,000 hp. An empty tender weighed over 120 tons; it could carry 80 tons of fuel and about the same of water. The whole rig was 132 ft long. They normally operated with a crew of two.
By way of comparison, in the 1860s the steam locomotives of the UP and CP weighed 30-40 tons; their working pressure was about 120 lbs/sq. in.; their horsepower would have been in a range of 150-250hp.
***
Back in the spring of early 1867, the Union Pacific, by way of some quite steep grades, was hammering over the Medicine Bow Range between Cheyenne and Laramie. At more than 8,000 feet, Sherman Summit was, for some years, the highest point on any of the world’s railroads. Once out onto Laramie Plains, a management crisis came to the boil: Durant and his cronies wanted to sack General Dodge. Their complaint was that he was being unnecessarily professional, though they would never have put it like that. As they saw it, the problem was that he was too often laying out a track along what he considered to be the most direct alignment, even though it might be more expensive than a more meandering and, perhaps, flatter course. They always wanted the longer route because, that way, there would be bigger mileage payments and larger land grants; though, again, they would never have put it like that. For example, Dodge might have chosen a longer, gentler route through the Medicine Bow Range, or even have avoided the range altogether. That would have added, say, 80-100 miles to the track and thereby brought Durant and Co. more of that mileage money.
The problem was that Dodge was a brusque engineer. Fortunately for him and for the railroad, just when the dispute came to a head, General Grant was taking a swing out west, to review progress on the railroad and to check on the Indian problem. Indeed, he had just been trying to negotiate, together with Generals Sherman and Sheridan, yet another treaty with Red Cloud and the Sioux. Now he and his fellow generals had moved on to Laramie, to bang heads together in this matter of the near-terminal tensions between the UP’s chief engineer and its general manager. (Incidentally, Laramie and Fort Laramie, the scene of the negotiations with the Sioux, are different places, about 100 miles apart.)
General Grant was running for the Presidency and, given that he was favored to win, Durant had to be careful. Furthermore, Dodge and Grant knew each other from their time in the Civil War. Anyway, Grant listened to both sides. Durant, at some length, charged Dodge with all kinds of money-wasting and autocratic decisions. When it came to Dodge’s turn, he simply said (according to his own later account) that if he suffered any more interference from any source, he would quit. Maybe that was enough because, after only the briefest of intervals, Grant let it be known that “the government expects the railroad to meet its obligations. And it expects General Dodge to remain with the road as its chief engineer until it is completed.” True, Grant was not “the government” - yet. But Durant knew when he was beaten. And Dodge? One report says that within three days he was back working with his survey crews 400 miles to the west, to cheers from workers along the way.
Within another week or two he was even further west, to meet with his opposite number on the Central Pacific. They needed to decide where their respective lines would join. But, given that each company was determined to build as much line as possible and thereby collar the maximum in mileage payments, agreement was impossible. Indeed, the mileage rewards were such that each company doubled their workers’ pay, to keep them building through a winter when the temperatures frequently fell far below freezing.
By the spring of 1869, the competition had become absurd; across northern Utah the two companies were grading their roadbeds in parallel and right alongside each other - in opposite directions! Indeed, the workers on one line were sometimes showered with the rock debris of a blasting operation on the other line.
In the end, Grant, by now the newly elected President, had to bang heads together. He decreed that if the two managements could not agree, then the government would order an investigation into the financial affairs of both companies. The threat was enough. Within days, it was agreed that the “joining of the rails” would take place four weeks later at a place called Promontory Point.
The top brass of each company now readied themselves for the long journey to Promontory Point. Special trains were prepared. A military band was arranged. An enormous national flag was ordered. Champagne was shipped. A cross-tie of laurel was carpentered and varnished. Gold and silver spikes (to hold the final rail to that special tie) were cast. Photographers were engaged. The overland telegraph was temporarily re-routed to the meeting place, so that the whole nation would know when the job was finally completed. And, no doubt, the whiskey merchants laid in extra stock and readied their tents.
The dignitaries started to arrive at Promontory. The two sets of rails were still a few hundred yards apart; the final closing of that gap would provide some curtain-raising entertainment. Everything was ready for the following day except for the unexplained absence of the Union Pacific Special that was bringing Durant and his party to the celebrations. Then it was announced that the Special had been delayed by heavy rains and spring snowmelt somewhere back in the mountains of Wyoming. Parts of the track had been washed away, and repairs would have to be made. The official ceremony would have to be postponed.
In fact, besides some flooding, there was another truth behind the delay. Perhaps because of the Union Pacific’s embarrassment at the time, there is even today some confusion in the accounts that have come down to us. Certainly there had been heavy rains, but, more or less coincident with the weather, Durant and his party had been kidnapped. A group of disgruntled workers had waylaid his train and demanded that they be paid some long-overdue wages. Indeed, they uncoupled Durant’s carriage and chained it to the track. For two days, the telegraph line hummed with urgent requests from Durant to his bankers back east to release funds so that the men surrounding his carriage could be paid. Eventually, the money (some say more than $250,000 in cash) arrived; the captives were released.
May 10 was bright and sunny. Now, with Durant and his entourage safely arrived, the nabobs of the Central Pacific, who had been kicking their heels, were impatient for the business of the
day to begin. First, an engine from each company, “Jupiter” for the CP and “Engine 119” for the UP, clanked slowly forward until, wheezing gently, they faced each other about 80 feet apart. Between the two, spectators then pressed forward to form a hollow square with a line of infantrymen lining one side. Behind the soldiers, sitting on the two engines and standing all around, were straggles of workers and other hangers-on. One of the more candid accounts speaks of some “dissipation” among these spectators - not too surprising, given that they had been waiting for several days with nothing much to do other than to “repair” to the whiskey tents. Off to one side was the band of the 21st Infantry Regiment; one assumes that at appropriate intervals it umpah-umpahed patriotically. Now the last two rails were brought up and laid in position, one rail by a crew of UP iron men and the other by a crew of much smaller CP Chinese. There was a deal of speechifying; at least one speaker made the point that they were about to complete the work “begun by Christopher Columbus”, and another reminded anyone who could hear him above the hubbub that this was now “the new way to the Indies”. Then, rather late in the day, someone remembered that perhaps the Almighty should be involved. A Rev. John Todd, who was doubling as a reporter for an eastern ecclesiastic journal, volunteered. He ended his prayer by neatly asking of the Heavenly Father that “this mighty enterprise may be unto us as the Atlantic of thy strength and the Pacific of thy love. Amen.”
During these various events, the telegraph operator, a Mr. Shilling, was conveying to an audience of several hundred other operators across the nation what must be reckoned as the nation’s first coast-to-coast networked commentary. Then, shortly after 12.40 p.m., he tapped out a rather perfunctory “Stand by. We have got done praying. The spike is about to be presented.” Various dignitaries stepped forward to hammer home one or other of those special spikes, to fasten the last two rails ceremonially onto that laurel tie. To drive the final spike, someone handed a silver-plated sledgehammer to Leland Stanford of the CP. He swung, and missed. Thomas Durant of the UP stepped up to do the job for him and also missed, at which point one imagines that those spectators suffering from that earlier “dissipation” would have contributed some well-judged ruderies at the expense of the two frockcoated worthies. Further, one can guess that Mr. Shilling, fingers on his key, could have endured no further suspense. So he just tapped out “Done”. It was 12.47 p.m. local railroad time.
The “electro telegraph” carried the news across the nation. In Philadelphia they rang the Liberty Bell; in New York and Omaha they fired hundred-gun salutes; in Chicago they held a 7-mile parade; on Wall Street they banged the gavel to suspend trading for the day; in San Francisco they announced (typically) the forthcoming annexation of the United States; in Sacramento 30 locomotives, with steam raised specially for the occasion, blew their whistles in discordant unison. Right across the nation crowds turned out to cheer and wave flags; bells were rung and banquets held long into the night. Even in far-away London, The Times editorialized the next day about what it called “One of the most marvellous [English spelling] undertakings of modern times”. It was too.
Back at Promontory Point, the two engines had inched forward until their cowcatchers were touching. Perhaps that was the moment when, with speeches done and those ceremonial spikes replaced with ordinary iron ones, the magnitude of what they had done really came home to both the workers and the dignitaries, when everyone congratulated everyone else - even if, for many of the workers, it meant that they would shortly be unemployed. It was also the moment when the two “official” photographers (A. J. Russell and his assistant, S. J. Sedgwick) took some of the most wonderful pictures in all the rich history of the United States.
What was it that the Engines said,
Pilots touching, head to head,
Facing on the single track,
Half a world behind each back?
What Bret Harte’s poetic engines might have said (“spoken slightly through the nose, with a whistle at the close”) was something that is little mentioned, perhaps understandably, in most of the writings that flowed from that marvelous day. Engines Jupiter and 119 might have complained about those bridges and trestles where they were limited to speeds of less than 10 m.p.h., and about those stretches of line along which they dipped and rolled like ships in a heavy swell. The fact was that long sections of the line had been banged down so hastily - pushed by the priority of garnering as much money-per-mile as possible - that they were unstable, even dangerous, at any but the very slowest speeds. The fact is that, within the first two years, the government inspectors (where had they been all this time?) demanded that hundreds of miles of rails be re-laid, bridges be re-built and, in some places, the line itself be re-routed.
There were other disappointments. For the first year or two, the promoters found that the money did not roll in at the rate they had hoped. Freight was light, there were too few passengers, and, beyond the first 200 miles through eastern Nebraska, the sale of railroad land to would-be settlers was very slow as the Indian “problem” in those parts was not yet resolved. As for the long-dreamt land route west toward the East Indies, this was thwarted by the Suez Canal being opened just a year after the celebrations at Promontory Point. It then proved cheaper to ship cargoes from the East Indies westward through the Canal and across the Atlantic to New York than to route them eastward across the Pacific to San Francisco and then across the continent by rail. Nevertheless, despite these early hesitations, traffic picked up and, by the mid 1870s, the moneymen (crooked and straight) were beginning to see some rewards.
The famous joining of the rails: the Central Pacific meets the Union Pacific just after noon on 10 May 1869
In 1870 a first-class ticket from Omaha to Sacramento cost $100; second class cost $75. The journey was advertised to take five days. There were numerous stops along the way as the locomotives needed to take on water and fuel and the passengers needed to eat and, presumably, get to a latrine. Strangely, none of the contemporary accounts mention this matter of “wayside” sanitation. Perhaps, with 60-70 passengers all making for the same facilities, we do not need to know the details. Time at these stops (usually about 20 minutes) was determined by how long it took the engineer to pick up fuel and water for his locomotive. So food was rushed and, apparently, without variety. One traveler wrote, “It was necessary to look at one’s watch to tell whether it was breakfast, dinner or supper.” Once under way, the trains made speeds of between 8 and 30 m.p.h., depending on the condition of the track. Within three years, back east, a line (with a bridge across the Missouri) was completed from Chicago to Omaha. So now, at last, it was possible to buy a through ticket for $200 in New York for the 2,800-mile journey from “sea to shining sea”. But, as the route was operated by three different railroad companies, the passenger had to change trains and stations in Chicago and Omaha. The journey took ten days.
Within 30 years of the driving-of-the-spikes at Promontory Point, three more transcontinental lines were built, plus two more across Canada. To generate income, and thereby to bring in the profits they reckoned to be their due, the promoters of these western railroads set out to attract migrants from within the US and from abroad to take up land beside their tracks. Like other companies, the UP set up a so-called Land Department; it placed regular advertisements in more than 2,000 newspapers across the eastern states; it set up promotion booths at state fairs and national expositions, it sent agents to every country in Europe. On offer to thousands of land-hungry peasants (many of whom were still living as feudal tenants) were cheap land and free rail travel to a chosen destination, with the railroad doing most of the choosing. Within a decade tens of thousands came, and kept on coming for the next 30 years. To this day there are clearly recognizable settlements of Swedes, Norwegians, Poles, Russians, Czechs, Slovaks, Swiss and Germans scattered all over the western plains and into the mountains. They are all solidly patriotic Americans, but at the same time they still proudly
remember their origins and, more often than not, the customs, costumes, flags and songs of their great grandparents. The English, responsive as always, came up with an enterprising scheme to send their about-to-be-released convicts across the Atlantic so that they might take advantage of the railroads’ generosity. When Washington realized what was planned, an official grumble was dispatched to London complaining about “these acts of discourtesy”.
Over the years since, much opprobrium has been thrown at the so-called “robber barons” of that railroad-building age. Doubtless they kept a Bible by their bedside, just in case. Maybe they even said their prayers. But money was their only real god; its pursuit their only religion. They made massive fortunes by every manipulation, fair or foul, that they could devise. Self-interest was their guiding star. Yet, one can argue that it was that very self-interest which generated the prodigious energy that, in turn, eventually really opened up the West. Without that driving force, the process might have taken another 30 years. In short, despite the almost endemic corruption of those tycoons, were they not ultimately -despite (or because of?) their rascally ways - national benefactors?
Today it would take a pile of doctoral theses to detail the myriad takeovers, buy-outs and mergers that, over the last 140 years, have made the Union Pacific not only the largest railroad system in North America but also the largest non-nationalized railroad in the world. The Central Pacific, the California Pacific, the Southern Pacific, the Kansas Pacific, the Missouri Pacific, the Missouri-Kansas-and-Texas, and a host of smaller lines all now come under the umbrella of the UP. Omaha, where it all began, is still the operational headquarters. There, in a very large low-lit room rather similar to that of Houston’s “mission control”, sit 70 men and women; each watches a group of computer-like screens: from a total of 32,000 miles of UP line across the nation, each person controls 500 miles of track via a series of micro-wave links which, with barcodes on each train, signal that train’s progress. The controllers in Omaha talk quietly to the driver/engineers who may be over 1,000 miles away; they can redirect a train to a new routing; they can switch another onto a siding so that a mile of empties can slide past; they can check the speed of four trains coming down the Platte Valley. They are in complete control; the engineers do their bidding.