Nothing Like It in the World

Yes. I finished reading Stephen Ambrose's book "Nothing Like it In the World" about the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. In celebration we all went to Promontory Summit to see where the railroads from California( The CP) and the Union Pacific (UP) met. Before Congress got its act together and called an end to the race across the US. The two railroads actually laid over 230 miles of parallel grade for tracks and you can see a lot of that parallell grade right by the Golden Spike National Park. It is fancinating to walk through the "cuts" in the mountain and see the giant fills all done by hand (no backhoes, no catepillars, no bull dozers, no dynamite only black powder) It is also incredible to see the greed that keep the two lines laying parallel grade in their race to make money and control more land. The grades of the two lines are some times within 30 feet of each other. Any way a good time was had by all and we enjoyed each others company and hot Chad Battison soup, hot apple cider and Moose munch. WE know how to travel.

IN one of the pictures of the group, we are standing in front of a "cut" this was dug out and blown out with black powder. In one of the pictures Dad and Bonnie are pointing to the holes drilled into the mountain with rods hit by sledge hammers. These they filled with black powder and blew out the cut.
One picture is the Big Fill. All of that ridge in the middle was man made. A 2% grade to fill up the ravine. The CP did it with 500 Chinese and Mormon workers working over two months to haul in over 100,000 cubit square feet of dirt. The UP moving parallel to them built a ricketty trestle over the same ravine. The Picture of me pointing with my arm shows where they built their trestle. They built it in 36 days and it was so bad one reporter said you took your life in your hand to ride across it. Eventually the CP bought out that section and used their grade and the Big Fill.
We stood on Golden Spike tie area and saw the locomotives in their engine house which are beautiful. They are exact replicas of the originals which were scraped in the late 1800's . ( We had a lousy sense of history back then...don't you agree) Anyway the engines really work and run in the summer time if you want to see them. It is a great history trip. And really fun for me because I had just read all about it. IT was an incredible feat the men of that time pulled off and we all reaped the benefits of it. Thanks to family for going. It made it so much more fun!