The Machines That Built the Transcontinental Railroad (1863-1869)

In the winter of 1866, an old steam locomotive stood in a wooden house on top of the Sierra Nevada. It wasn't pulling a train. It was hoisting granite. How the world's most powerful machines were really built, with the human cost left in. New documentary every other day, subscribe here: 👉 Construction Legends:    / @constructionlegends   ☕ Support our work: https://buymeacoffee.com/Construction... 📘 Steel, Steam and Nerve, our illustrated book on the machines that built America: https://www.construction-legends.com This documentary follows the few machines the Central Pacific and Union Pacific had between 1863 and 1869: a locomotive shipped around Cape Horn, another turned into a crane over the Summit Tunnel, nitroglycerin mixed on the mountain after a crate of it blew up in San Francisco, and three locomotives dragged over the Sierra on sleds. Then the Ten Mile Day, the Union Pacific boss held hostage at Piedmont, and the spike that Stanford missed. And the men who did everything those machines could not, whose dead no one ever counted. More from Construction Legends: 🛢️ The Machines That Built the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in 3 Years:    • The Machines That Built the Trans-Alaska P...   💥 The Secret Nitroglycerin Factory That Built the Transcontinental Railroad (1866):    • The Secret Nitroglycerin Factory That Buil...   🏙️ The Machines That Built the Empire State Building in 410 Days:    • The Machines That Built the Empire State B...   📌 CHAPTERS 00:00 A Locomotive on Top of the Sierra 06:55 The Summit Tunnel 10:09 The Crate That Blew Up San Francisco 17:07 Locomotives on Sleds 20:32 Ten Miles in a Day and the Last Spike SOURCES John R. Gilliss, Tunnels of the Pacific Railroad (1870): http://cprr.org/Museum/Tunnels.html Southern Pacific Bulletin (1928), Ten Mile Day: http://cprr.org/Museum/Southern_Pacif... NPS, Golden Spike Cultural Landscape Report, ch. 2: https://npshistory.com/series/archeol... NPS, Golden Spike Historical Handbook: https://npshistory.com/handbooks/hist... NPS, Chinese Labor and the Iron Road: https://www.nps.gov/gosp/learn/histor... Daily Alta California, 21 April 1866 (coroner's verdict): https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=DAC186604... Testimony of Charles Crocker (1876/77): https://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese_Immig... National Archives, Pacific Railway Act (1862): https://www.archives.gov/milestone-do... Stanford, Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project: https://web.stanford.edu/group/chines... #engineering #documentary #transcontinentalrailroad #railroadhistory #steamlocomotive #history #megaproject