Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad

Bain does not have the talent to liven up his literature like other western authors (i.e. David Lavender or Evan S. Connell) but he makes up for it with a plethora of information on almost every aspect of the vast project.
Bain covers the initial dreams of Asa Whitney and Theodore Judah, the creation of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific, the acceptance of Congress with the project, the perils of laying tracks through a mountain range and on a vast and at times, a hostile plain, and continues his writing past the meeting at Promontory Summit with a 35-page Epilogue.

But Bain goes a step further than most authors on the subject by intricately detailing the boardroom battles that the Big Four and the U.P.'s Durant and Ames waged throughout the building of the RR lines. More of the book is spent in Washington, San Francisco and New York than it is out on the prairie or up in the Sierra Nevadas. Bain also writes ad nauseam about the Credit Mobilier scandal which rocked the nation during Grant's administration. I can only award four stars though as I wish that less text would've been spent on the corporate aspect and more writing would've covered the common track layer's plights, everyday life and work details.

It all makes for interesting reading for someone searching for the entire story (and getting even more) of the Transcontinental Railroad but Bain's book is not the right source for the casual reader looking to refresh one's History 101 knowledge of the subject before taking the family vacation out west to visit a few of the sites. There are other books that are half the length of this that will work just fine for that. Do be cautious with Ambrose's "Nothing Like it in the World" though as railroad experts accused him of plagiarism and inventing colorful stories in said work.

- One final note, the book has eight highly detailed maps (which include basic relief, rivers and RR tent towns) which I found sufficient enough to follow along both of the railroadsy progress towards meeting in Utah.


Short Threads Poorly Woven Together   May 22, 2002
 2 out of 5 found this review helpful

This book has 711 pages of text of which I am now about half-way through. I find Bain's writing style tedious, and I am wondering whether it will even be worthwhile for me to finish the book. There are just too many short threads about too many topics, which Bain doesn't tie together. I would compare, for example, James McPherson in "Battle Cry of Freedom". Rather than jump from battle to battle, as they might have appeared to the subscriber of a newpaper, McPherson gives you a larger picture by following campaigns from beginning to end. In contrast, Bain has an obsessively chronological way of telling his story. Example: Chapter 23, "Nitroglycerine Tells." This chapter is a little over 14 pages long, but it contains only a page or two about the explosive, mostly about how the Central Pacific overcame instability problems by hiring a chemist to manufacture it at the construction site. The chapter is mostly about other things -- raising capital, problems of debt, good and bad weather, etc. Or take the Credit Mobiliere and the evil Dr. Durant. I have a Ph.D. in Finance, and I can't figure out what's going on. Bain's writing is like a garment made of 1 inch threads, woven together in small patches, that comes apart as soon as you begin to move your arms. Like that garment, not much is being synthesized and sticking in my mind.


Good historical book but has flaws   January 30, 2002
 5 out of 8 found this review helpful

I used Empire Express as one of the sources for a research project that I had to do and I found it a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Empire Express is one of the most detailed books on the first transcontinental railroad of 1863-1869 that I have ever found. People, places, events, and ideas are all explained in crystal clear detail, leaving the reader with no ambuigities on how exactly the transcontinental railroad was constructed. Empire Express also includes a well-collected spread of primary source pictures in the middle, which is very helpful. Its information is invaluable if one needs true details.

However, reading this book was also slightly painful and got boring after a while. It is a really, really long and lengthy history tome and at times the author digresses into people or places that really have nothing to do with the transcontinental railroad. If you are looking for a simple overview of the construction of the railroad, turn away from this book; you'll give up before you ever get out of the book's opening 7 chapters on Asa Whitney the merchant and how he thought of the transcontinental railroad on his barge on the way to China and how it would improve Sino-American trade...Empire Express also is hard to navigate through when one is looking for specific information; the index sometimes is missing pages on specific topics.

It all boils down to whether you are able to read a lengthy historical tome and enjoy it as well or if you are put off by such long historical books; as for myself, I got halfway through and by that time I had finished with my project.


A fascinating look at a remarkable achievement   January 26, 2002
 6 out of 6 found this review helpful

In "Empire Express" author David Haward Bain tells the story of the building of the transcontinental railroad, from the original evangelizing of the idea by Asa Whitney in the early 19th century to the Credit Mobilier scandal that engulfed Congress in the wake of the railroad's completion during the second Grant administration. In telling the story the author skillfully bridges fifty years of American history, from the agrarian, inward-looking communities of Jacksonian America to the dawn of American industrialism and expansion of the Gilded Age.

In tracing the evolution of the dream to build a transcontinental railroad from conception to completion in a single volume narrative history, Bain tackles a subject nearly as daunting as the original project itself. The cast of characters involved were many and diverse: Asa Whitney, Ted Judah, the "Big Four," the Ames brothers, Charles Durant, Grenville Dodge, several US presidents and cabinet officials, a slew of state and local leaders, not to mention the numerous mid-level railroad managers that actually turned the dream into reality. Weaving this wide array of participants and events into one seamless story is challenging, to say the least, but the author proves worthy of the task.

Bain is not a historian by training, but rather a former journalist currently serving as professor of literature at Middlebury College (VT). Thus, his writing has a certain literary quality and tends to eschew the bland prose common in more academic pieces, which could have made this book all but unbearable. However, it must be noted that the author isn't entirely successful in bringing order to the chaos. One can easily become confused as new players constantly emerge in the storyline while others quietly fade away. This cycle is repeated often, leaving the reader to thumb back to re-read certain sections again for clarity.

Finally, a modern American reader of "Empire Express" can't help but be shocked at the malfeasance attending the construction of the transcontinental railroad, not to mention the blatant conflict of interest prevalent throughout. For instance, Leland Stanford served as President of the Central Pacific and Governor of California simultaneously, pushing through legislation favorable to his company in the process. Meanwhile, the Union Pacific's Oakes Ames served as a US Congressional Representative with influence on federal railroad policy during construction of the road. Taken altogether, the present day pseudo-scandal surrounding Enron looks positively benign in comparison.


It's hard to make a financial scandal exciting   December 13, 2001
 1 out of 5 found this review helpful

David Bain has written an exhaustive history of the first transcontinental railroad. His account starts with pre-Civil War interest in the project, and culminates in the meeting of the rails and the famous "golden spike." The author gives a lot of detail about the challenges of construction, but this is predominantly a book about behind-the-scenes political and financial machinations. Anyone knowledgeable about US history has a fuzzy notion of the Credit Mobilier scandal, but here Bain explains in detail exactly how the "robber barons" got rich at the cost of their investors and the US government. I'm reluctant to criticize such a painstaking work of scholarship, but it did not hold my interest; financial scandals rarely make riveting reading. I much preferred Dee Brown's "Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow," which was broader in scope and directed toward a popular audience. Bain's book has 700+ pages, eight maps, and over 60 photos.