Talk:First transcontinental railroad/Archive 1

This article is americentric. What about the first transcontinental railway for all the _other_ continents?. Bryan Derksen

Good comment. Do you have any ideas on what else this article should be titled? Perhaps we could then have First Transcontinental Railways point to the different continental railroads and have First Transcontinental Railroad (singular) redirected to First Transcontinental Railways. maveric149

Is "First Transcontinental Railroad" the proper name of the first transcontinental railroad in North America? The capitalization suggests this might be the case. If so, then it's appropriate for this content to remain here, but I think there should still be links to the other major rail lines. Not sure what I'd call it. Perhaps we could have a link-list article named "First transcontinental railways" (or maybe "Major railways" to include other significant routes such as the Orient Express) and then link to various important railways from there? I wasn't expecting to contribute to any of these articles, so I don't want to make any grand pronouncements on these matters. :) -BD

Perhaps when the new wiki software is ready, we can remane this article First Transcontinental Railroad (North America). However, some Canadians might object to this.... If that becomes the case, then "North America" could be changed to "(America)" or even "(United States of America)". maveric149

There was a railroad built across Panama in 1854. Shouldn't that be called the First Transcontinental Railroad? Moving this article to First Transcontinental Railroad (United States of America) would be a good idea. SFGiants

Does any other country have an article on a first transcon rr? When we do reach that point I would recommend renaming the North American/USA one to First transcontinental railroad (US).

Rhallanger 23:38, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the tittle "First Transcontinental railroad" is wrong here. The first transcontinental railroad in the Americas was the Panama Railroad opened in 1855. This article should be renamed U.S. Transcontinental railroad or something similar, the "First" tittle can be given to many things, I don't think that the Panama Railroad article should be named "First transcontinental railroad" either, the fact that it was the first transcontinental railroad is included in the article. Radioheadhst 18:27, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

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The Canadian National railway across Canada was not completed until 1885 (16 years after the American one.)

The first trans-Australia was completed 1912. The first north south trans-Australia should be completed in 2003.

The TransSiberia was completed 1905. Rmhermen 04:24, Sep 19, 2003 (UTC)

I don't understand what makes this article "Americentric." The railroad was built with the intention of linking the east coast of the United States with the west coast, and it was the first time anywhere in the world that a transcontinental railroad was built. Unless this conclusion is wrong, I can see nothing wrong with the title of the article. Leo Okonski

Hunh? If you actually read the article, you will find that the one in the USA was not the first transcontinental railroad built. -- Infrogmation 17:48, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Note the capitalization - it is a proper name. --21:01, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Subject: panning for gold?

Isn't that a sluice that the central man's stirring with the pitchfork? Isn't that a pan whose contents are being shown to us at the left? In spite of the national archival cataloguing of this image, aren't these men actually panning for gold? Wetman 20:38, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

It looks like it. -- Infrogmation 22:49, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Good catch! The image has now been removed.--Lordkinbote 06:05, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

removal of quick summary

I removed the "Quick Summary" section that was added by an anonymous user 165.121.61.105 on May 5 [1]. It was unwikified and written in a quite unencyclopedic (it seemed like it was written for children, perhaps as a standalone essay that someone decided to include wholesale in the article). At first I made an attempt to salvage it, removing the unencyclopedic sections, but I realized it wasn't worth it, since there was little left that wasn't already covered, and the section was a gross oversimplification of U.S. history. -- Decumanus 01:32, 2005 May 10 (UTC)

Indians or Native Americans

Should the caption under the picture showing the train passing infront of the peak read:

The train pictured is the Jupiter which carried Leland Stanford, one of the "big four" owners of the Central Pacific, and other railway officials to the Golden Spike Ceremony. Notice the Indians on the hill overlooking the train.

Or:

The train pictured is the Jupiter which carried Leland Stanford, one of the "big four" owners of the Central Pacific, and other railway officials to the Golden Spike Ceremony. Notice the Native Americans on the hill overlooking the train.

The latter is more correct, as they are probably not from the Sub-Continent of India, but rather native peoples living in North America.

A few missing people

As a Brit I should not be writing about American history, so would someone over there add the names and roles of General Grenville Dodge and Thomas Durant? JMcC 00:43, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Now added a couple of paragraphs JMcC 12:39, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure there were African slaves out in the west. Has no one found documentation on thatm?Aminatam 12:07, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

IIRC, slavery was not legal in the territories, which was where construction was taking place. Nor in California, which was a 'Free State.' Moreover after 1 January 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation took effect and slavery was abolished (granted, this was an executive order by Abraham Lincoln (Union) and only over CSA states that had not returned to the Union yet, but that's a longer story). Short of the long of it is, 'No, slaves were not used to build the railroad.' User:Baka42 20:07, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Current Passenger Service

This section as currently written is inaccurate. "It runs along the original line between Sacramento and Salt Lake City, Utah." The original line does not pass through Salt Lake City, Utah. How much of the California Zephyr runs on the original transcontinental railroad is not easy to answer as both the original Central Pacific track and the sorta parallel Western Pacific track (which does pass through Salt Lake City) are now owned by the Union Pacific and they can route the Zephyr over whichever track they please. I will attempt to clarify this if anybody has any objections please "fix". Davemeistermoab 18-March-2006

• Sounds good, I put that in and you're right, there are some slight modifications. I mod'd that SLC-SAC from someone that said it ran the current route, either the entire way or from Omaha - Sac. (they didn't mention that from SLC-DEN it's old DRGW and DEN-OMA it's old BN route. Rhallanger 09:42, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
• Thanks I didn't mean to step on anybody's toes. Davemeistermoab 21 March 2006.

section for post completion events

I would like to see a section listing the major events that have been made to the route since its completion. My question is, would this contribute to the intention of the article or violate it. For example I woule like to list

• Lucin Cutoff (in 1910????)
• Re-alignment through Reno-Sparks (in 1904????, The Reno Gazette Journal had an article about a bridge that was recently uncovered by developers in Sparks and how this bridge is believed to be an original railroad bridge before the re-alignment)
• New tunnel bypassing Donner Pass completed in mid 1990's.
• UP's abandonment of passenger rail in 1970??
• UP crews plant a new "1000 mile tree" near Morgan Utah after the old "1000 mile tree" was distroyed and no longer marked 1000 miles from Omaha Nebraska due to route re-alignments. (sometime in the late 70's early 80's)
• Amtrak's re-alignment of the Chicago-Sanfrancisco route in 1983, this was the last chance for the public to ride the original route in its entirity.
• Merger of the CP and UP (already mentioned in article but in a different section)

I would appriciate everyone's comments. The above was a quick outline, obviously this would be better researched before adding to the article, and being from Utah and Nevada could obviously use some help on the events in other states. Davemeistermoab 21 March 2006

RR in SF?

I didn't think the railroad made it to San Francisco - it's pretty difficult with the Bay in the way. The Transcontinental Express went to Oakland, right? Lagringa 15:18, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Too much California POV

The article's POV is way too much oriented from a California POV and gives the impression that the Union Pacific (which built 2/3 of the track) just tagged along. Americasroof 20:42, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Vandalism

The constant anonymous vandalism to this article is astronishing and it's astonishing how extensive and hidden it is. I restored it back to an October 16 version. I really, really, really dislike the history section and will work to rewrite it. But the section should not have been nuked. It just needs to be rewritten. Americasroof 14:41, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

GA Re-Review and In-line citations

Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. Currently this article does not include in-line citations. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. LuciferMorgan 00:15, 13 December 2006 (UTC)