Who were the "big four" and who were the other leading businessmen in the rail business?

Question

referres to the first american transcontinental railroad

also if you have any info about John Henry it would be much appreciated

Answer 1

not sure

Answer 2

Leland Stanford, C.P. Huntington, Charles Crocker and Mark Hopkins, all merchants in Sacramento, California, were the "Big Four" that conceived of and built the Central Pacific Railroad, which was chartered along with the Union Pacific by the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, the CP being the western portion of the first Transcontinental Railroad in the US.  The CP became the Southern Pacific.

On the UP side there were Mr. Dodge and later Mr. Harriman who advanced the UP across the plains of the mid-west and over the Rocky mountains to Utah, where the two companies met at the railhead of Promontory Point, Utah.  This portion of the line was retired after, as I recall in a joint venture, a bridge was built across the Great Salt Lake.

John Henry may have been a real person, but the legends surrounding him are divergent.  On the one hand he was a railroad worker, on the other his legend portrays him as a miner.

In both instances, John Henry challenged the notion that machines could out-perform man.  In a contest between he and a machine, he was the victor, but at the cost of his life, as the legend portends that his heart exploded after winning the competition.

In essence, this is more of a statement or metaphor for a man's significance as the industrial revolution began to supplant men with machines.  Of course that trend continues then, right up to the present day.

The "second"  industrial revolution got underway in the 1950s in the form of "automation".  The "third" industrial revolution is now upon us in the form of digital replacement of people.

In both instances, the promise for mankind was more "leisure time."  As it is turning out, "leisure time" is a polite euphamism for "unemployment."

Answer 3

A couple other key figures were Theodore Judah, who surveyed the original route of the Central Pacific RR over the Sierra Nevada mountains, and Thomas Durant, who was a key financier for the Union Pacific RR.  Durant was the principal in the Credit Mobilier finacial scandal which involved a number of politicians, including President Ulysses Grant, in the 1870's.

Grenville Dodge was the chief engineer of the Union Pacific, and was a former Major General in the US Army during the Civil War.

An excellent and enjoyable book on the transcontinental railroad is a book by the late Stephen Ambrose "Nothing Like It In The World: The men who built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869."