That transcontinental railroad, completed in 1893, was the only one built entirely with private money on privately purchased land, by a self-made railroad tycoon, James J.
He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1948, and is probably best known for The Waste Land, The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock and Old Possum's Book Of Practical Cats - which was later became Lloyd Webber's musical, Cats.