A railway begins with its track. Let us follow the people who laid it. On 21 February 1804 the world's first railway journey, with a steam locomotive built by Richard Trevithick, ran in south Wales. That locomotive weighed about five tons. It was so heavy that it broke the cast-iron rails it ran on.

The Stockton and Darlington Railway in England opened on September 27, 1825, with the locomotive Locomotion No. 1 pulling the first train. George Stephenson's railways used rails 4 feet 8.5 inches apart, a width later called standard gauge.

Stephenson also had to cross soft ground. His plan for crossing the bog called Chat Moss was to float the track on a raft laid on top of it. The raft was made of timber, heather and brushwood.

In 1862 Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act. It gave the Central Pacific and Union Pacific companies land and government bonds for each mile of railroad they built.

Union Pacific crews built the transcontinental railroad west from Omaha, Nebraska, while Central Pacific crews built east from Sacramento, California, until the two lines met in Utah. The railroad was finished at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869.

You may have heard that the golden spike finished the track. In fact, the golden spike was only ceremonial: the track was finished with ordinary iron spikes in an ordinary tie. When the last spike was driven, a one-word telegram, "Done.", was sent across the country.

The Central Pacific also had to tunnel through the Sierra Nevada. It dug its Summit Tunnel on four faces at once: two teams worked inward from the two ends of the tunnel, and two worked outward from the middle.

The winter of 1866-67 was a fierce one in the Sierra Nevada, and it brought forty-four storms.

In the Summit Tunnel, switching from black powder to nitroglycerin raised the average progress in the headings from 1.18 to 1.82 feet a day, and at the bottom of the tunnel from 2.51 to 4.38 feet a day.

London's Metropolitan Railway, which opened in 1863, was the world's first underground railway to carry passengers.

About 152 km of tunnels and shafts were dug for the Gotthard Base Tunnel project in Switzerland, counting the two main tunnels, the safety and ventilation shafts and other passages. As of November 2026, the Gotthard Base Tunnel, about 57 km (35 miles) long, is the longest railway tunnel in the world; it opened on 1 June 2016.

Words to know

• locomotive: engine that pulls
• gauge: rail width
• transcontinental: across a continent
• ceremonial: just for show
• raft: floating base