Customer Reviews

Rival Rails: The Race to Build America's Greatest Transcontinental Railroad

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I became a fan of Walter Borneman (Alaska, 1812, The French and Indian War, Polk) after reading "1812," and have since then pre-ordered each of his books as they become available through Amazon. "Rival Rails" is another excellent, focused book from this established historian.

While touching on a century of railroad expansion and development in the vast southwest territory between Kansas City and the West Coast, this latest book from Borneman focuses on a relatively brief period from the 1860s to the 1880s during which a network of thousands of miles of railroad was built westward from Chicago and Kansas City to the west coast, with the dramatic accompanying population shifts and development of agricultural, mining, and other resources of these vast new western lands. Through these rail connections, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and California were rapidly incorporated into the commercial, social, and political sphere of the greater United States. The arrival of the railroads dramatically transformed the West Coast. Once connected with Chicago, Los Angeles rapidly grew from a sleepy coastal town into one of America's great cities.

This expansion of a network of railroads westward was complex in its engineering challenges as well as in its political-financial processes, as entrepreneurs like Huntington, Gould, and Crocker, east coast and European investors, Congress, and even state and federal courts were regularly involved. Many players (some successful, some not) were involved in this expansion, and keeping these sorted out was a bit challenging as the book progressed. Fortunately, Borneman was kind enough to provide the reader not only with a series of railroad route maps within appropriate chapters, but also with two list, one of the Railroads and another of the Railroaders, just after the introduction. My coherent reading was greatly aided by my bookmarking to maintain easy reference to these list and to the maps. A substantial section of historical photographs adds to the enjoyment of the book

Though largely consolidated today, the trains still run over the rail beds originally laid down by these entrepreneurs, builders and engineers, and many, many thousands of workers who almost entirely by hand dug tunnels, built rail beds, and laid the tracks. Railroads are still vital to the U.S. economy (ask Warren Buffett), and Amtrack's ridership is at record levels. "Rival Rails" gives an excellent and readable overview of this brief but critical phase of U.S. development from a country largely operating east of the Mississippi to a country socially, politically, and commercially integrated from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast.

Until I read Rival Rails, I knew little about transcontinental railroads beyond the famous photograph at Promontory Summit, where the Union Pacific and Central Pacific met in 1869. As Walter Borneman points out, however, that ceremony did not in fact mark completion of the first transcontinental railroad. Gaps remained between Sacramento and Oakland and between Omaha and Council Bluffs. The latter required the Union Pacific to ferry passengers across the Missouri River until completion of a bridge some three years later. Transcontinental travel entirely by rail first became possible in August 1870, when the Kansas Pacific--one of the "rival rails" whose history Borneman recounts--reached Denver.

Rival Rails is an engrossing history of the less well known southern transcontinental lines. Generally snow-free, they were, and are, significant components of the national transportation infrastructure between the west coast and the rest of the country. Their building is a complex story, and Borneman provides sufficient detail without overwhelming the reader. He describes the political, corporate, financial, legal, and engineering obstacles that had to be overcome and includes vivid portraits of the men who overcame them and who struggled against each other to build "America's greatest transcontinental railroad." The specialist can find additional details in the endnotes, some of which are quite extensive.

As a part time Santa Fean, I was fascinated to read about the history of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe--even though it bypasses Santa Fe at Lamy--and was more than a little bit gratified that it rose to the "top of the heap" over its arch rival, the Southern Pacific. This it accomplished by judicious expansion, prudent management, and the food and lodging of the Fred Harvey Company.

Borneman's writing is eminently readable and full of delightful turns of phrase. If one needed proof that sound scholarship can be entertaining as well, Rival Rails furnishes that proof.

Being a huge Bourneman fan and having loved 1812, French Indian War, and Polk, I was very enthusiastic about his newest book. Coming away from it, underwhelmed is an understatement. The recurring thought I had as I forced my way through this mess was "so what and who cares?" Bourneman does a poor job of keeping separate the various railroad companies and magnates behind them, and an even poorer job of making the reader care about what they're reading. Slogging through it I almost had the feeling Bourneman owed his publisher another book on his contract and he just mailed this one it, putting below par effort into it. The other three outstanding books I've read by him all conveyed the passion he had in his subject matter. This one completely fell flat.

That being said, you can't hit a homerun every time, and I look forward to his next historial project and will gladly read his work again. But for this I have to say, unless you're a hardcore rail enthusiast, avoid it.

If you love railroads and their history, then don't miss this book. As with his other works, Mr. Borneman has written history that flows and reads like a novel. Everything you might want to know about the building of the railroads in the west during the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries is here - the orginal surveying of possible routes, the technological and physical struggles to lay the rails through difficult terrain, financing difficulties, corporate and political battles and backstabbings,etc. Most importantly, the author does a wonderful job bringing to life the personalities of the larger than life men who led the rails west. Great, readable history.

Walter has again shared his passion for this great country with the continuing story of our Westward Expansion; this time through the construction of the railroad empires West of the Mississippi. In true Borneman style, Walter develops the historical character of these western rail barons and their lines in such a way that the reader is transported back to the later 1800's to the turn of that century. As one follows the tracks across the West, you can see the physical challenges that must be overcome, recognize the personalities at work and feel the sense of urgency and competition that is at play.

The reader comes away with a true understanding of the web of rails that once dominated this part of the country and still influence the course of development from the "Old West" to the "New West." A must read for railroad buffs and western history fans.

"Rival Rails" by Walter R. Borneman is a sweeping work that fills a number of gaps in the story of U.S. railroading. In this excellent volume, Borneman presents the American railroad saga with a focus on the West, and covers it with a sure hand. From early dreamers, politicians, and surveyors through the Civil War and the transcontinentals, this book literally gives the reader the "Big Picture" of railroad development across half the continent and updates it to the present. His final well-placed comments include observations of Warren Buffet and the purchase of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe. Borneman puts it all in perfect professional perspective: in this narrative, Buffet's part is really just the same as those played by Jay Gould and E.H. Harriman in their own time.

I cannot speak highly enough of this excellent book. Borneman's prose and style read like a novel. The titans of industry who pass through his story are real people to the reader, and their decisions, right and wrong, are explained frankly and without bias. The scope of his canvas is huge, and though the story obviously chooses the Santa Fe as the ultimate winner of the "best " all-time route between Chicago and the Pacific, the myriad of other roads that played (and continue to play) a part are well represented, from household-famliar entities like James Hill's Great Northern to the wonderful sprinkling of colorful early Colorado roads.

Borneman's own love of Colorado and his roots there show nicely: I have never read a historical work that wove the Denver, South Park & Pacific or the Colorado Central into the Big Story of the American Railroad battles in the West, let alone seen the narrow gauge Denver & Rio Grande's struggle for regional position so frankly presented. And few books on this subject have mentioned my own personal hero, David Moffat, the dreamer and gambler whose Denver Northwestern & Pacific tried to break the Harriman hold on Colorado by building straight West and challenging the Front Range of the Rockies. Moffat's spectacular failure in the eternal blizzards, steep grades, and snowsheds on Rollins Pass are stories that my own grandfather told me as I sat at his knee wide-eyed beside the woodstove in his cabin at Grand Lake. Though only a footnote, it's a feather in Borneman's cap that he gives this kind of detail to a history that often is painted with just a broad flat brush. An essentially "Santa Fe" history has never been about all of the other competeing roads around it, and how they all evolved.

This is not meant to be a definative work, but it has a perfect place in any library of Western American Railroad work. I recommend it to any historian, or to anyone interested in American railroads.

I can't wait for Walt Boreman's next book. And if you like this one, I also highly recommend his definative work on the history of Alaska: "Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land" (2003, Harper Collins). I can say that I keep Walt's Alaska book on my shelf as a ready historical research reference. Nothing beats it that has been written to date on the subject.

Good reading to one and all!

I hate to disagree with the other reviewers, but after my high hopes this is an incredibly dull book. I give it 3 stars because of the amount of research it took to write it, but that research often gluts the thesis. There is hardly a mention of the golden spike at Promontory Point, Utah, which linked the Atlantic and the Pacific coasts. There is no mention at all of James Eads who built the first bridge that could carry a train across the "unbridgeable" Mississippi, at St. Louis. I have always loved trains from the first time I rode one as a kid. I fremember going into the St. Louis Union Station, marching up to the ticket-taker for the Wabash Cannonball and asking 'how fast does this baby go?' Disappointng answer: 'no faster than any other train.' The author stays for the most part west of the Mississippi inspecting railroads now long out of business and were simply links between the major lines like the Union Pacific and the Santa Fe. The are too many railroads in this book, too many entrepreneurs who wanted to build them. After a while I lost track (no pun) of who was involved with which railroad, though to the author's credit there is a glossary of builders at the front. There is much to learn here if you can keep it all straight. The style is quite colloquial at some spots, annoyingly so at times. So are the chapter names. Those in themselves reveal how disorganized this book is: one chapter deals with the Royal Gorge at Canon City and the battle for land rights to string rails through it. The very next Chapter is titled "Handshake at Deming," a small town in southern New Mexico, 500 miles from the Royal Gorge. One thing I had never given much thought to was railroad ties that held the rails down and kept them properly spaced. It was tough to get across a state like Kansas which had a paucity of trees to turn into ties. There is an old silent film called "The Iron Horse" which climaxes with Promontory Point with the two "original locomotives" nose to nose as the famous as the famous photo from 1867 shows them. Hogwash, says the author, because the film was made around 1920, and those two engines had been retired in 1910. The is not much tribute to the Chinese workers who did much of labor from the west. The reviewer above who says the book "reads like a novel" does not consider someone like me who had to whip himself through it. There is too much information, too many characters, too many locations, and most of all too many railroads. I think this will become a reference book for scholars doing research on any given one. It does not read smoothly.

Cataloguing the many railroad companies and the even greater number of tycoons that owned them through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries must've been a daunting task. While reading the book I found it difficult to keep straight the plethora of company names (which were long and often intermingled), their associated management (which were many), and the different periods of time (in which the author seemed to jump). The reader is, however, forewarned of the complexity of the railroads from the beginning. The book begins with 7 pages that list the characters, companies, and events that will coalesce throughout. Perhaps it was just me (and from reviews of others it very well could be), but I found myself confused in the specifics of the railroad competition. That being said, Borneman does an excellent job of dissecting the relationship between the federal government, finance, demand, local law, and engineering that was required to lay tracks throughout the west. He has also illustrates the rise and decline of the country's dependence on the railroads, as well as the affects of economic recessions/depressions, environmental recognition, the Civil War, and technological advancement.

The author makes it clear in the introduction that this is NOT the story of the famous Central Pacific-Union Pacific transcontinental railroad. After the historic joining in Utah, the western U.S. was wide open for new railroad construction and a multitude of projects began in an effort to reach the Pacific coast by the shorter and faster southern route around the Rockies. Eventually the race came down to two main competitors, the Southern Pacific building eastward, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe building toward the west. Although the two rails would meet at Deming, NM, the SP was determined to go it alone and kept building toward the Gulf coast, forcing the Santa Fe to find its own way into California. To get that point, however, the author gives in depth coverage to many of the other failed attempts along the way by other firms and this may become tedious to some less enthusiastic readers. I personally found the entire adventure utterly fascinating and couldn't put it down. If you love railroad history, you will love this book.