Fourth Grade
Worksheets
Railroads
When the Civil War started, train travel was unsafe and poorly organized. Railroad lines were very short. They often started in one city and then stopped in a city close to it. Each company used a different track. Only certain trains could go on each one. Most of the railroad lines were in the North.
After the war was over, railroads improved quickly. One event that helped was the building of the transcontinental railroad. This was a rail line that joined the East Coast to the West Coast.
When the transcontinental railroad project started, there was already a line to the Mississippi River from the East Coast. The new line needed to be built from Nebraska to Sacramento, California. The people who started in Sacramento worked toward the east. Those in Nebraska worked toward the west. The two lines would meet. The job wasn't easy. It also wasn't cheap. The government had to help pay for the railroad. Huge loans were given to two companies. The project began in 1862.
