Bipolar electric locomotive, without gears of 120 tons and 1500 volts, built for the Paris - Orleans railroad . This locomotive, an entire advance for the time, made a test before embarking for France at a speed of 168 kilometers per hour.

In the United States, circa the beginnings of the 20th. century, the railroad that crossed the continent was the "Southern Pacific", traveling from Los Angeles to New Orleans although the trip of the Atlantic to the Pacific could also be made by the Santa Fe , taking the old " Union ", Central Pacific", Northern Pacific", Great North or the Chicago Milwaukee & Saint Paul", only changing carriages, in luxurious trains.

Let' s make an imaginary trip locating us in the year 1925: on this primitive railroad, leaving New York in the "Twentieth Century Limited" the flyer of first order of the "Central New York" railroad, between New York and Chicago. At two and forty five of the afternoon of a Monday we leave the beautiful and comfortable terminal station of the city of New York, dragged quick and smoothly by a great locomotive moved by electricity. Once it has passed the limits of the city and the formerly smoky tunnels left behind, this electric locomotive is unhooked and substituted by a steam locomotive . We descend of the train. Let us go for a walk along this train, advancing until the machine to know something of this enormous mechanism, typical of those that must take us through the continent. Measuring 1.525 meters of longitude and 4,50 meters high, its heavy weight of 127.00 kilograms rests mainly on six big motor wheels, higher than the tallest man , which work powered by steam cylinders of 2.000 horsepower. The effect of traction of this enormous beast is tremendous. From his cab, the machinist looks at us as if he was in the window of a second floor of a house. Quickly, the great machine drags us along the riverbanks of the beautiful and historical Hudson river , and in three hours we arrive to Albany, at around 242 kilometers of distance of New York. During the night this speed is sustained, making very few stops, and these only to receive passengers for the whole itinerary. The train takes only sleeping carriages, and there is not any of the incidents that gives place the descent of travelers. All our trip partners go to Chicago, and on Tuesday in the morning, twenty hours after having left New York, we arrive in Chicago, to 1.546 kilometers of our starting point.

Several hours can pass before putting on again on track in the "Overland Limited.". The train that we have just left was luxurious; but the one that we now take its even more comfortable, well equipped and provided as a cruise that will make a long voyage. The restaurant car goes with us until San Francisco. The last car of the train is endowed with a rear platform to observe the landscape comfortably, and a part of it is furnished as if it was a living room to rest and read . There is also a coffee room , a living room ,a smoking room , a barber's shop and a bathroom, where waitresses assist to as much as the traveling ladies need. Almost the whole passage goes to the coast of the Pacific. The following morning we are crossing the Mississippi river, and later overcoming the great valleys of the Rocky mountains . During the following morning we cross the great desert existent between this mountains and Sierra Nevada, and in the afternoon of the same day we arrive to the foot of that great mountain range .

There we are towed by a monster locomotive , beside it all the others that until then we have seen, look indeed small. This giant has 28.75 meters in length and weights 300 tons. This gigantic locomotive drags the heavy train, apparently with little effort, to raise it up the hill, by the inclined slope, and in the morning of the following day we were descending by the sunny skirts of the mountain range that extends in the side of California, and soon afterwards we can contemplate the Golden Gate , that is the mouth of the San Francisco bay , and see the sun brightening in the immense sea Pacific. We have been in march during eighty and six hours, crossing a total of 5,222 kilometers, and so fast has been the transition, that is difficult to realize that less than four days ago we took a walk by the streets of New York.

Photo : General Electric Co. Photo of a quick train for the underground lines completely built in steel. Each car weighed 43 tons and had 72 seats, being able to take many more standing passengers . Photo: General Electric Co.

The railroads in the communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean.

The first great effort for the construction of a transcontinental railroad in the United States was that of the iron roads of the "Union Pacific" and that of the "Central Pacific", projected one from Omaha toward the west and the other one from San Francisco toward the east. Taking in consideration all the circumstances, it had not ever before been presented until that time such a daring rail project .

Remembering the scarce population and the poverty of the country in those times, the little development in which was the practice of building and exploiting railroads and of thousand other sciences that this construction depended on , the immensity of the wild areas that it had to cross, the distance of the base of provisioning, the rude of the means of transport, the number and the implacable ferocity of the wild enemies that it had to face, it is relevant to consider that the construction of the "Union Pacific" and the "Central Pacific" must be forever without rival in the history chapters of the railroad. It is outside of the limits of this page to make a description, even very brief, of the conception and realization of this project, of the men that, like prophets, preached to deaf hearings the necessity and the possibility of such a track , and of the fatigues and tribulations that had to overcome those pioneers who ended up building it . But, finally, all the difficulties were surmounted, and on May 9th. 1869 the locomotive, taking Leland Stanford and other officials of the "Central Pacific", going toward East, met in Promontory , Utah the locomotive that took the officials of the "Union Pacific" moving toward the west, and the last nails (one of gold, silver and iron, from Arizona; another of silver, of Nevada, and another of gold, from California) assured the rail that united both lines . Considered this historical event from the point of view of the actual ideas, it can very well be judged that the method of carrying out, financially, that monumental enterprise was not done keeping in mind the national Government's interests . It was given indeed to those railroads a domain on extensive areas of land of property of the United States that should have been conserved free for the colonists who wanted to settled down there , and it was allowed to this railroads to dominate the development of the new districts where they would cross trough in an extension and degree non reasonable . This was a truth, for what refers to the "Central Pacific" and its successor especially the "Southern Pacific" in relation with the state of California. And although, without a any doubt , these railroads contributed vastly to the development of the states , it is evident now that the same results could have been obtained without depositing such an enormous power in hands of particular interests .

But even being certain all these facts , they should not reduce the glory of the men that had the vision and the value to organize and to carry out the first of these big companies, and the names of Leland Stanford , Collis P. Huntington and Grenville M. Dodge will always occupy a high position in the long list of the founders of the North American empire. In the same way that Columbus was the first one who showed how an egg can stay right on one of its ends, these men showed how the dangers and the difficulties of a wild and almost unexplored country could be dominated and to achieve that the transport of the Atlantic to the Pacific was sure and quick. It is also true that the railroads " Union " and "Central Pacific" formed only the last link of a chain of roads, and themselves didn't go from ocean to ocean; but by means of them the chain was complete, and the new railroad opened the communication of the great American west and it united it to the east with true iron link.

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