Talk:First transcontinental railroad

An event mentioned in this article is a May 10 selected anniversary (may be in HTML comment)

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Good Article Review

This article is currently at Good Article Review. LuciferMorgan 09:38, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Is the route correct?

Please have an expert check the route carefully one more time. I just corrected a faulty part, that somehow survived all your reviews. --h-stt !? 11:09, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

There's an interactive map on the PBS website showing the route. Their further reading section links to a site called Railroad Maps, which includes a high resolution download from here. I don't have the interest to check it pesonally. -xlynx 04:22, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Misleading title

The First Transcontinental Railroad, was the Panama Canal Railway, with 47 mile, joined the Atlantic with the Pacifics oceans, on january 1855 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Smilegioconda (talk • contribs) 14:40, August 11, 2008

Please review the discussion elsewhere on this page. The consensus is to keep this article at its current name because "First Transcontinental Railroad" is the popular name for this work of engineering; it is a proper noun and not a descriptive phrase. Slambo (Speak) 21:01, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

When opened in 1855, the Panama Railroad was correctly described and referred to by the press and public as: "That great enterprise, the inter-oceanic [not transcontinental] or Panama Railroad across the Isthmus [not continent], is completed, and the rough Atlantic is now wedded, with an iron band, to the fair Pacific." (See "A Great Enterprise" The Portland (Maine) Transcript, February 17, 1855) (Centpacrr (talk) 22:42, 11 August 2008 (UTC))

The world's first transcontinental railroad was actually the Panama Railroad which connected the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in 1855.

As I commented in the Transcontinental Railroads article, I suggest that the U.S. Railroad is moved to an article entitled Second Transcontinental Railroad or an article entitled First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States, and the First transcontinental railroad article redirects to the history of the Panama Railroad.

--WikiDrive (talk) 09:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

This was discussed over a year ago and closed with no consensus for a move. The comments are in the archive. Slambo (Speak) 14:35, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't see a discussion of any substance - I'm putting this in for a requested move. It is only the first transcontinental railroad in the United States, and the title should reflect that. fishhead64 (talk) 03:33, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

The Panama Railroad is NOT a transcontinental railroad as it only crossed an isthmus, not a continent. The CPRR/UPRR was originally referred to as the "Pacific Railroad" when being built and after it opened in 1869, and then the First Transcontinental Railroad when the Northern Pacific, Southern Pacific, Atlantic & Pacific, DRGW, and routes were opened in subsequent years. The term "First Transcontinental Railroad" is, in fact, more of an accepted and well recognized "proper" name then it is a description. For that reason alone the article should retain that name. (The Canadian Pacific [1881], Trans Siberian [1916], Trans-Australian [1917], and other "transcontinental" roads were all completed after 1869 as well.) (Centpacrr (talk) 03:45, 5 June 2008 (UTC))

"The Panama Railroad is NOT a transcontinental railroad as it only crossed an isthmus, not a continent." That's debatable. And if it is a proper name, how recognisable is that to your average encyclopedia reader from outside the United States? fishhead64 (talk) 03:52, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

"Isthmus" n. A narrow strip of land, bordered on both sides by water, connecting two larger bodies of land. "continent" n. One of the main landmasses of the globe, usually reckoned as seven in number (Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia, and Antarctica). Not the same thing at all. In addition to being a recognized name for the line, it was also the first railroad completed across a continent. (Centpacrr (talk) 04:01, 5 June 2008 (UTC))

Big Four question

Was James P. Bailey really one of the original Big 4? I thought that Colis P. Huntington was the fourth. If not, his name still needs to be connected with the Big 4 at some point, as he became important very shortly afterwards (as is indicated already). Tony Waters213.182.148.50 (talk) 10:37, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

No, it was Crocker, Huntington, Stanford and Hopkins. See The Big Four for more detail. Slambo (Speak) 12:28, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:369842.1020.A.jpg

Image:369842.1020.A.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 04:02, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

 Done -- added rationale. Slambo (Speak) 11:43, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Original track?

In areas where the original line has been bypassed and abandoned, primarily in Utah, the road grade is still obvious, as are numerous cuts and fills, especially the Big Fill a few miles east of Promontory. The sweeping curve which connected to the east end of the Big Fill now passes a Thiokol rocket research and development facility. Where exactly is that stretch of abandoned road? Anybody know the coordinates? Thanks --Ragemanchoo (talk) 10:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

First Transcontinental Railroad → First United States transcontinental railroad — The present title is misleading and untrue. This is not the first transcontinental railroad. It is the first US or North American transcontinental railroad, and the title should reflect that —fishhead64 (talk) 03:39, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Notification left at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains. Slambo (Speak) 11:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• oppose See my reasoning below (Centpacrr (talk) 05:44, 5 June 2008 (UTC))

• oppose for the same reasons as described by User:Centpacrr below. Slambo (Speak) 11:21, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

• oppose for reasons below. The name offers no value added and doesn't address an inaccuracy of any such name claim Americasroof (talk) 14:36, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Oppose: see my reasoning below regarding Russell's photograph

Discussion

Oppose: While the CPRR/UPRR was originally referred to as the "Pacific Railroad" when being built and after it opened in 1869, it also became known as the First Transcontinental Railroad when the Northern Pacific, Southern Pacific, Atlantic & Pacific, DRGW, and other routes were opened in subsequent years. The term "First Transcontinental Railroad" is, in fact, more of an accepted and well recognized "proper" name then it is a description. For that reason alone the article should retain that name. In addition the Canadian Pacific (1881), Trans Siberian (1919), Trans-Australian (1917), and the other "transcontinental" roads were also all completed well after 1869. Some claim that the Panama Railroad (1855) is the "Frist Transcontinental Railroad" because it connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, but this is also incorrect. The Panama Railroad only crossed an isthmus (a narrow strip of land, bordered on both sides by water, connecting two larger bodies of land), not a continent (one of the seven main landmasses of the globe -- Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia, and Antarctica). That is not the same thing at all. (Centpacrr (talk) 05:44, 5 June 2008 (UTC))

• Comment Of course the Panama Railroad was and is a transcontinental railroad. Its completion was widly haied as an an astonishing and historic achievement at the time. I see nothing in the definition of continent that says it is a continent only at its wide points, never at its more narrow points. And if one wishes to argue semantics, the Panama Railroad actually went all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific as a single railline, which arguably could make it much more of an actual trancontinental railroad than this one. That said, I have no objection to the article being at "First Transcontinental Railroad" if that is what it was commonly called (so long as the those who bother to read the details of the article can understand the name may not be a technically accurate description). -- Infrogmation (talk) 13:44, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
• Comment about what was really first railroad across U.S. - I dislike the current name of "First Transcontinental Railroad" but dislike the proposed "First United States transcontinental railroad" even more. I put the disambig on the top of the page a while back to sort this out. First Transcontinental Railroad is widely used to describe the Omaha to Sacramento project (neither of which is on a coast) and so the proposed name change doesn't seem to offer any value added. And in the for what it's worth department the Omaha to Sacramento railroad was never connected by land to the nation's eastern railroads at Omaha until 1872 when a bridge was finally built across the Missouri River to Council Bluffs, Iowa (which was supposed to be the official eastern starting point of the railroad project). The first true continental railroad was in 1870 via Kansas Pacific and Denver Pacific connecting to the Union Pacific after the Missouri River was bridged at Kansas City. Until we can come up with a better name to describe the situation, I don't see any reason to change it. Americasroof (talk) 14:36, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Note about precedents - A while back the Pony Express article ran into a similar discussions since there were other instances where horses were used for fast delivery of the mail. This was addressed by saying the article was specifically about a business operation between St. Joseph and Sacramento. The First Continental Railroad clearly says it is about a business operation between Omaha and Sacramento. Americasroof (talk) 14:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Panama Railroad as Transcontinental Railroad: The Panama Railroad as used in "transcontinental" travel between New York and San Francisco before 1869 was actually only a very small portion (between Aspinwall and Panama City) of the entire ticketed passage which was offered by the North American Steamship Company prior to the completion of the Pacific Railroad with the vast majority of the trip being made over water by steamer. I see that the contention that the Panama Railroad is a "transcontinental" railroad is derived from an entry to that effect originally made by Infrogmation on February 2, 2004, in the article Transcontinental Railroad and on December 27, 2004, by RJII (since permanently banned from editing for abuse), but neither of these contentions (or the current portion of the article still claiming that the Panama Railroad is a "transcontinental railroad") cite any references to support it. When opened on January 28, 1855, the railroad was actually referred to as the "Inter-Oceanic" railroad. Using this logic, a railroad running from Miami, FL, on the Atlantic Ocean to Tampa, FL, on the Gulf of Mexico could also be described as a "transcontinental railroad" as well which would, I think, be misleading. (Centpacrr (talk) 19:36, 5 June 2008 (UTC))

Reply No, the analogy between Florida and Panama doesn't work. Panama is at the bottom of the continent. There is nowhere else to go - if you take Panama out, the continent is shorter. If you take Florida out, it isn't. In any event, the real issue, imo, is that the title is confusing. If this is about the FIRST transcontinental railroad, why not merge it with transcontinental railroad? Because it isn't, really, it is about the first transcontinental rail crossing of the United States. By renaming the article in line with this reality, we completely avoid the diverting argument about whether Panama is part of a continent or not - which, whether you like it or not, is not clear-cut. Given these points, what, exactly, is your objection? fishhead64 (talk) 00:24, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

• "First Transcontinental Railroad" is the common name for this work of engineering, as is used, for example in one of the references in the article [Bain, David Howard (1999). Empire Express; Building the first Transcontinental Railroad. Viking Penguin. ISBN 0-670-80889-X.]. I'm sure we can find other references dating back quite some time that also call it that. It also seems much less likely to me that the Panama Railroad's common name would be First Transcontinental Railroad. The key here is that this article's title is a proper noun and not a descriptive noun. Slambo (Speak) 11:43, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree fully with Slambo as this is exactly my point: the term "First Transcontinental Railroad" is the commonly accepted name for this work of engineering and has been for more than a century. In addition to David's book you can also see my own 2005 book, Riding the Transcontinental Rails: Overland Travel on the Pacific Railroad 1865-1881, and the late Steve Ambrose's tome Nothing Like It in the World. (Centpacrr (talk) 12:57, 6 June 2008 (UTC))

I plead guilty to starting the article on the Panama Railway, as I saw it as an important subject no one else had gotten around to previously. However I cannot claim credit for being the first to notice that it was "transcontinental". My mid-20th century Encyclopedia Americana uses the term in reference to it, and I strongly doubt they were the first. -- Infrogmation (talk) 20:15, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Consensus against move. DMacks (talk) 17:45, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Original Western Pacific/Central Pacific Connection to SF Bay?

Although initially slippery on the western terminus of the line, the Pacific Railway Act included land grants and bonds for the railroad between Sacramento and San Francisco. The CPRR informally conveyed their rights to build this line to a number of San Francisco businessmen who were already building a railroad from San Francisco to San Jose. The 1865 Pacific Railway Act formalized the the original Western Pacific's role in building the line west of Sacramento. They successfully completed 20 miles of construction from San Jose into Niles Canyon before succumbing to liquidity problems in 1866. The Associates bought this company in 1869, and completed the line from Sacramento to Oakland and San Jose in the fall.

Due to its authorization by the Pacific Railway Act, its connection to California's most populous city (via rail and ferry), and its completion to the salt water of the bay, I believe this portion of the First Transcontinental Railroad should be included. I do not want to step on any toes, and I see there have been a lot of problems with this article. I am therefore asking to see if there is support for adding the original Western Pacific and the line from Sacramento to the Bay Area. Thanks. Rrrarch (talk) 08:06, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

I encourage you to add what you can. I've always thought this article was weaker than what you might expect. I did the last major revision here which was more than a year ago. I added quite a bit on the Union Pacific side and kept meaning to come back for further clarifications and clean ups but never quite got around to doing it. The histories of its connectons on either end is of interest. The term "Transcontinental Railroad" was a misnomer when the spike was driven. It was not directly connected to the eastern railroads (trains had to be ferried across the Missouri River at Omaha) and as you mentioned there was some drama on the west. The map associated with the article is sort of misleading in that the western portion is captioned "Built later." If you start cleaning up the article that spur me to come back and start back on my todo list for the article. Americasroof (talk) 14:17, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Arizona Territory Gold Spike

The image of a gold spike from Arizona Territory has nothing to do with the First Transcontinental Railroad. The gold spike that was at Promontory is at the the Cantor Center for the Arts at Leland Stanford Jr. University in Palo Alto. A nearly identical spike manufactured at the same time is owned by the State of California and is on display at the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento.

This photo should be removed from the article. Rrrarch (talk) 08:14, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Multiple gold spikes were placed at Promentory (and then removed). The one in the photo (which I took) was taken at the Union Pacific museum in Council Bluffs (and was on loan from a New York museum). I would prefer a photo of the California spike. But one has not been forthcoming. The photo caption clearly identifies it as the "Arizona" Territory spike. Americasroof (talk) 13:59, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Russell's 1869 photograph

It is VERY IMPORTANT TO NOTE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION REGARDING THIS PICTURE: Russell's 1869 photograph that commemorates the building of the transcontinental railroad deliberately FAILS to include the hundreds of Chinese workers who were just outside the frame of the photograph. In Mirror-Travels, Jennifer L. Roberts describes the positioning of this photograph as follows: "Russell's 1869 photograph had been carefully posed to exclude the hundreds of Chinese workers standing just outside the frame" (116). The deliberate negation of Chinese labor to this photograph represents what Russell has described as reflective of "19th century Anglo-American nationalism." This version of nationalism is rooted in ideas of manifest destiny, white nativism and a version of the US that negates the larger American ethnic population.

Although 10,000 recruited Chinese laborers built most of the transcontinental railroad, they were consistently paid less then their white counterparts and worked under deplorable conditions. In Mappers of Society, Ronald Fernandez describes the inhuman conditions that the Chinese worked: "They worked for a dollar a day—half the wages of “white” men—sometimes under harsh conditions. During the winter of 1866, for example, railroad executives decided that even with snow on the way, workers would drill a tunnel through solid granite. Thousands of Chinese immigrants labored underground in snow tunnels throughout the day and the night. Officials did note that many workers died when avalanches buried them in snow. Their bodies were recovered when the spring thaw allowed workers to dig out their frozen comrades" (174).

When the transcontinental railroad was finished, Russell’s 1869 photograph of the transcontinental builders posed the picture in such a way that it excluded the hundreds of Chinese workers who were just outside the frame of the picture.

Unfortunately, even in recent time, this same erasure repeated itself in 1969 with The Golden Spike Centennial commemorated of the original 1869 spike-driving ceremony with a costumed reenactment, replicas of the two original locomotives, and the original Golden Spike that was re-drove at the precise time that it happened in 1869. However, this time protesters asserted the ways in which the historical narrative and—as Roberts asserts—“the entire ideology of nineteenth-century Anglo-American nationalism” was reproduced in this 1969 reenactment (116). In dissent, these protesters were there to draw more attention to the unacknowledged Chinese contribution, and to assert that the celebration of the railroad served as a genocidal vehicle for 19th century Native American populations.

DO NOT NOMINATE THIS PHOTO FOR AN AWARD! IT IS EXCLUSIONARY, RACIST, AND DELIBERATELY NEGATES THE INCLUSION OF AMERICAN ETHNIC LABOR TO US HISTORY! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xiphophorus (talk • contribs) 19:36, 14 October 2008 (UTC)