"It had taken the bloodshed and sacrifice of the Civil War to reunite the nation: North and South. But when the war was over, Americans set out with equal determination to unite the nation: East and West. To do it, they would build a railroad. Its completion would be one of the greatest technological achievements of the age -- signalling at last, as nothing else ever had, that the United States was not only a continental nation, but on its way to becoming a world power. And when the railroad was finally built, the pace of change would shift from the steady gait of a team of oxen, to the powerful surge of a steam locomotive. The West would be transformed."