Workin' on the railroad: Today's builders hurdle barriers unknown in transcontinental era

PROMONTORY SUMMIT, Box Elder County — It was a record that historians claim has yet to be matched: 10 miles of rail laid by hand, in just one day.

Over 1,000 men, all employed by the Central Pacific Railroad, accomplished the feat on April 28, 1869. Twelve days later, the last spike was hammered into the nation's first transcontinental railroad here at Promontory Summit.

Now, about 50 miles from this historic site, the Utah Transit Authority has begun work on a commuter-rail line. But even with modern equipment such as bulldozers, cranes and special rail-laying machines, the work is slow, and UTA has yet to lay even one mile of rail in one day during construction of the FrontRunner commuter-rail line.

The first phase is 44 miles long, stretching from Salt Lake City to Pleasant View in Weber County. UTA began construction in July 2005. Work is expected to be done in June 2008 — three years after construction started.

Steve Meyer, UTA project manager over commuter rail, said the differences between his rail project and the transcontinental railroad are substantial. If laying rail was all UTA had to worry about, modern equipment would allow the agency to lay up to 20 miles or more in one day, he said.

"If I had a wide open space, we could do that," Meyer said of the transcontinental railroad's 10-mile record. "There is equipment that would do it all at once: pull the rail out, set the ties, clip them and keep on rolling."

Construction of the entire transcontinental railroad took six years, according to the Central Pacific Railroad's online museum. It stretched 1,776 miles, from Omaha, Neb., to Sacramento, Calif.

Today, only an outline of the historic 10-mile segment remains. Erosion and time are slowly erasing the path. Up against the Promontory Mountains, just a few miles from the "last spike" site, you can see places where dirt was pushed up and packed down to create a level surface for the tracks to be laid.

"It's hard to see," said Bret Guisto, archaeologist for the Golden Spike National Historic Site. "The tracks are gone."

But the record stands.

Back in 1928, Erle Heath, associate editor of the railroading magazine Southern Pacific Bulletin, wrote in an article reminiscing about the event: "The scene was an animated one. From the first 'pioneer' to the last tamper, about two miles, there was a line of men advancing a mile an hour; iron cars with their load of rails and humans dashed up and down the newly laid track; foremen on horseback were galloping back and forth."

Modern complications