What were the two companies who built the railway and what areas did they build?

Beginning in 1863, the Union Pacific, employing more than 8,000 Irish, German, and Italian immigrants, built west from Omaha, Nebraska; the Central Pacific, whose workforce included over 10,000 Chinese laborers, built eastward from Sacramento, California.



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Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 on July 1, 1862, and the Central Pacific Railroad (CPRR) and the Union Pacific Railroad were authorized by Congress.

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John Stevens is considered to be the father of American railroads. In 1826 Stevens demonstrated the feasibility of steam locomotion on a circular experimental track constructed on his estate in Hoboken, New Jersey, three years before George Stephenson perfected a practical steam locomotive in England.

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They decided on Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake; some 690 track-miles from Sacramento and 1,086 from Omaha. On May 10, after several delays, a crowd of workers and dignitaries watched as the final spike was driven linking the Central Pacific and Union Pacific in the “Golden Spike Ceremony.”

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The story goes that on May 10, 1869, the Central Pacific Railroad's tracks from the west were connected to the Union Pacific Railroad's tracks from the east in Promontory Summit, Utah.

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Railways were introduced in England in the seventeenth century as a way to reduce friction in moving heavily loaded wheeled vehicles. The first North American gravity road, as it was called, was erected in 1764 for military purposes at the Niagara portage in Lewiston, New York.

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In 1862 Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Acts which designated the 32nd parallel as the initial transcontinental route and gave huge grants of lands for rights-of-way. The legislation authorized two railroad companies, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific, to construct the lines.

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Union Pacific Railroad. The Union Pacific was responsible for laying the track from Omaha to Promontory Point. The men who worked for the company had to build a railroad through the Rocky Mountains and the Uintas.

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Route of the first American transcontinental railroad from Sacramento, California, to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Other railroads connected at Council Bluffs to cities throughout the East and Midwest.

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The first purpose built passenger railway, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, was authorised by Act of Parliament in 1826.

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The Middleton Railway is the world's oldest continuously working railway, situated in the English city of Leeds. It was founded in 1758 and is now a heritage railway, run by volunteers from The Middleton Railway Trust Ltd. since 1960. Main station building on Moor Road.

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The Central Pacific and the Union Pacific were the two companies charged to build the Transcontinental Railroad. Although the government funded and approved the building of the Transcontinental Railroad before the Civil War, the main construction of the railway began after the Civil War around 1865.

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