USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The Central Pacific had to run train track through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Working three shifts around the clock, Chinese immigrants hand drilled holes into which they packed black powder and later nitroglycerine. The progress in the tunnels through the mountains was agonizingly slow, an average of a foot a day.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Central Pacific Railroad blasted a total of 15 tunnels through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It took Chinese workers on the Central Pacific fifteen months to drill and blast through 1, 659 ft of rock to complete the Summit Tunnel at Donner Pass in Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Detailed explanation-3: -The Central Pacific began laying track eastward from Sacramento, California, in 1863, and the Union Pacific started westward from Omaha, Nebraska, two years later. To meet its manpower needs, the Central Pacific hired thousands of Chinese labourers, including many recruited from farms in Canton.

Detailed explanation-4: -The Central Pacific, pushing east from Sacramento, California, assaulted the stubborn granite heights of the Sierra Nevada peaks with a growing army of Chinese laborers, hammering out its route mile by mile.

Detailed explanation-5: -The 15 tunnels along the Central Pacific line required massive amounts of explosives to blast through solid granite. In addition to nitroglycerin produced on-site, crews used as many as 500 kegs of black powder a day during the construction phase through the Sierra Nevadas.