The Engineering That Built The World Race For The Railroad S01E01 Subtitles

At 00:00:01,740, Character said: In the 1860s, America is divided by
civil war and 2 ,000 miles

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At 00:00:08,440, Character said: of unclaimed land west of Mississippi.

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At 00:00:11,700, Character said: At this time, it was way easier to
travel to Europe from the east coast of

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At 00:00:18,040, Character said: .S. than to get to California.

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At 00:00:20,000, Character said: But one man has an audacious dream to
connect the country.

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At 00:00:24,420, Character said: America needs a transcontinental
railroad.

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At 00:00:29,710, Character said: Building it becomes a high -stakes race
between rival companies.

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At 00:00:34,910, Character said: Competition was very bitter.

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At 00:00:37,750, Character said: Both are trying to seize as much land as
they possibly can.

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At 00:00:41,370, Character said: More miles of track we lay, the richer
we get.

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At 00:00:44,730, Character said: They'll stop at nothing to claim their
fortune.

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At 00:00:47,830, Character said: He is one of the most dishonest people
to ever grace this planet.

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At 00:00:53,970, Character said: It's a daunting engineering challenge.

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At 00:00:56,830, Character said: This was one of the biggest
accomplishments in world history.

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At 00:01:01,230, Character said: mountains to finally connect the coasts.

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At 00:01:04,910, Character said: This is the race to build the
Transcontinental Railroad.

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At 00:01:33,960, Character said: It's the middle of the 19th century, and
the United States is extending its

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At 00:01:38,200, Character said: territory westward, all the way to the
Pacific Ocean.

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At 00:01:43,400, Character said: But for settlers attempting the journey,
what they encounter is nearly

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At 00:01:47,600, Character said: unfathomable. Traversing this is a major
undertaking. It's known as the Great

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At 00:01:53,220, Character said: American Desert.

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At 00:01:54,160, Character said: From about midway through Nebraska out
to the Rocky Mountains, it's a no -man's

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At 00:02:00,060, Character said: land as far as white Americans are
concerned.

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At 00:02:03,720, Character said: The thing about the West is a harsh
environment. If you're riding in a

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At 00:02:08,320, Character said: you can only go about 20 miles a day,
which means that you're going to be on

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At 00:02:12,140, Character said: wagon trail for months and months and
months.

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At 00:02:15,220, Character said: You might get caught in the winter in
the mountains, which, of course, is

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At 00:02:20,180, Character said: for you and your family.

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At 00:02:22,740, Character said: Then, almost overnight, the number
braving the journey explodes to some 300

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At 00:02:29,020, Character said: in what will become known as...

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At 00:02:32,170, Character said: the gold rush.

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At 00:02:34,730, Character said: In the late 1840s, gold was discovered.
Huge amount of wealth was being

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At 00:02:39,650, Character said: generated in California.

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At 00:02:41,230, Character said: People wanted to get out there and be
part of that growth, but it was almost

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At 00:02:47,110, Character said: impossible to get there.

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At 00:02:49,590, Character said: You have to remember at this time, it
was way easier to travel to Europe from

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At 00:02:55,590, Character said: the east coast of the U .S. than to get
to California.

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At 00:02:59,530, Character said: There are alternative routes by sea, but
they're exponentially longer.

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At 00:03:04,850, Character said: It was tens of thousands of miles, or
you had to take a steamship down to

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At 00:03:11,530, Character said: Panama or Nicaragua, make an overland
journey, then get another boat off the

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At 00:03:15,810, Character said: coast to San Francisco.

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At 00:03:17,390, Character said: If you were to go the long way around
the tip of South America, it could take

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At 00:03:22,250, Character said: six months because you're at the mercy
of wind.

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At 00:03:25,430, Character said: There is a faster method on the horizon.

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At 00:03:30,130, Character said: Railroad. But of the little track that's
been built by 1860, 96 % is east of St.

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At 00:03:36,910, Character said: Louis.

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At 00:03:37,870, Character said: There is only one established railroad
west, but it's contained to California.

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At 00:03:46,530, Character said: And now its innovative designer is
working on something bigger.

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At 00:03:51,210, Character said: Members of Congress, esteemed members of
Congress, America needs a

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At 00:03:56,830, Character said: transcontinental railroad.

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At 00:03:59,320, Character said: to connect the Pacific and the Atlantic
Oceans.

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At 00:04:03,300, Character said: Theodore Judah was a real visionary.

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At 00:04:05,540, Character said: He was also one of the first civilian
engineers in the U .S.

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At 00:04:09,640, Character said: He was a big believer in using those
skills to improve the world, to make

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At 00:04:15,400, Character said: better for people.

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At 00:04:17,180, Character said: At age 11, Judah's admitted to
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, at the

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At 00:04:22,900, Character said: the country's only civilian engineering
college.

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At 00:04:27,150, Character said: His whole life seemed to be moving
towards this moment.

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At 00:04:32,510, Character said: The notion of building a
transcontinental railroad in the 1860s

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At 00:04:37,390, Character said: fantastic to think about because nothing
of that size had ever been even

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At 00:04:43,230, Character said: attempted before.

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At 00:04:44,270, Character said: And so it was like a moonshot.

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At 00:04:49,000, Character said: Railroad companies struggling to cross
something like the Allegheny Mountains.

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At 00:04:52,040, Character said: And he says, let's cross the entire
continent.

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At 00:04:54,840, Character said: You're talking about 2 ,000 miles of
rail. This would be like someone today

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At 00:04:59,700, Character said: our environment saying, you know what we
should do? We should colonize Mars now.

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At 00:05:03,660, Character said: Let's do that.

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At 00:05:06,260, Character said: The boldest part of Judah's plan,
building east from Sacramento,

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At 00:05:11,320, Character said: through one of the steepest mountain
ranges in North America.

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At 00:05:15,850, Character said: A steam engine can only climb a grade of
a certain degree, a very gradual climb.

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At 00:05:23,150, Character said: The Sierra Nevada are notoriously steep,
rocky granite peaks.

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At 00:05:29,630, Character said: There's a limited amount of friction
that can be generated. Having a metal

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At 00:05:35,050, Character said: on a metal railroad, they could only go
so high so far in terms of the grade,

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At 00:05:39,890, Character said: which means for every hundred feet you
go.

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At 00:05:43,690, Character said: Laterally, you can only go two feet up.

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At 00:05:46,890, Character said: That means you have to engineer the line
so that you make sure that that grade

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At 00:05:51,750, Character said: is something that the train can manage.

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At 00:05:56,770, Character said: And finally, once we've made it through
the Sierra Nevada... Through mountains?

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At 00:06:03,090, Character said: I ** sure there's a way.

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At 00:06:05,730, Character said: Who's funding this?

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At 00:06:07,870, Character said: Well, I'm looking for investors.

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At 00:06:14,349, Character said: It's a good plan.

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At 00:06:15,670, Character said: I guarantee you it'll be profitable.

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At 00:06:18,870, Character said: Crazy.

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At 00:06:20,950, Character said: As Judah runs into a dead end in
Washington, 1 ,500 miles away,

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At 00:06:25,950, Character said: a former surgeon is making moves in the
railroad industry, hoping

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At 00:06:32,830, Character said: to strike it rich.

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At 00:06:34,310, Character said: Thomas Durant is an ambitious man. He
received a medical degree at the age of

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At 00:06:38,950, Character said: 20.

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At 00:06:40,010, Character said: He practiced medicine for all of three
years before he decided to move on. For

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At 00:06:45,050, Character said: him, everything was about self
-interest.

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At 00:06:47,410, Character said: How to make the most money. He didn't
let other people get in his way.

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At 00:06:52,170, Character said: Now the co -owner of a small regional
railroad, Durant is thinking bigger,

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At 00:06:57,350, Character said: manipulating its finances for his own
gain. It's gone.

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At 00:07:02,570, Character said: The bond money, it's gone.

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At 00:07:05,590, Character said: Expenses were higher than we
anticipated.

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At 00:07:10,000, Character said: He went behind my back.

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At 00:07:13,220, Character said: God helps those who help themselves.

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At 00:07:19,080, Character said: Durant tanks the railroad stock, buys in
big, then spreads a false rumor to

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At 00:07:25,000, Character said: inflate the stock back up again.

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At 00:07:28,480, Character said: Durant then sells his company's inflated
stock and buys in to the most powerful

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At 00:07:34,000, Character said: railroad company in the U .S., the Union
Pacific.

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At 00:07:38,800, Character said: Thomas Durant finagled the $2 million he
needed to buy into the Union Pacific,

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At 00:07:44,740, Character said: and he manages to become the vice
president.

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At 00:07:50,020, Character said: Durant's move positions him as one of
the biggest players in the U .S. train

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At 00:07:54,280, Character said: industry.

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At 00:07:55,800, Character said: He sees an opportunity to make fistfuls
of money by building a railroad. He

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At 00:08:02,120, Character said: really is not worried about how well it
functions.

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At 00:08:05,020, Character said: He just wants to make his cash and get
out.

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At 00:08:09,960, Character said: Meanwhile, out west, Judah convinces
four Sacramento businessmen to invest in

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At 00:08:15,560, Character said: his impossible dream.

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At 00:08:17,460, Character said: Led by millionaire merchants Charles
Crocker and Leland Stanford, who will go

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At 00:08:22,360, Character said: to found Stanford University, they form
the Central Pacific Railroad.

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At 00:08:27,700, Character said: They're known as the Big Four.

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At 00:08:31,520, Character said: To put Judah's...