Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad

Rating:
Summary: A remarkable tale of human achievement and foibles
Review: With more intrigue and quirkier characters than a John
LeCarre spy thriller, David Haward Bain's history of the
transcontinental railroad is a remarkably engaging and
entertaining 711 pages. From the former hardware-store owner
Collis P. Huntington III, worrying himself to an early grave over
the precarious finances of the Central Pacific, to the notorious
Dr. Thomas C. Durant, repeatedly driving his Union Pacific to the
brink of bankruptcy with ever-more-elaborate schemes to divert
more of its generous government subsidy into his own pockets,
Bain does a remarkable job of brigning the historical characters
to life. For the most part, these men seem to have succeeded
almost despite their own best efforts to the contrary, textbook
examples of unbridled, unenlightened, even bungling self-interest
leading to a greater good for all. All, that is, except the
remaining American Indian nations, who watched helplessly as the
onrush of settlement brought their whole way of life to an abrupt
end. The story does have its heroes - not the great financiers,
but rather the mostly young and idealistic civil engineers and
the Chinese and Irish work crews who, ignoring the shenanigans of
their bosses, built in a few years a 2000-mile railroad through
the most daunting terrain imaginable, using little more than hand
tools, horsecarts, and ample supplies of dynamite and
nitroglycerine.
The one point on which I would fault Bain is that his
coverage of the financial underwriting of the project, which
plays such a prominant role in the story, seems to assume a
knowledge of bonds, discount rates and subscription fees that few
but professional accountants will possess. The general reader
(like the hapless U.S. Congress of the period) will be left with
only the vaguest notion of where all the money came from and
where it went. Still, you get the general idea. These empire-
builders got the job done surely, but only with so much shady
dealing that they barely paused a moment after driving the golden
spike, before burning all their ledgers in order to fend off the
pending investigations of fraud.