The editor of the Sacramento Union wrote of the ceremony, ‘It was both festive and alarming; for while we could not help ourselves from being awed by the prospect of beginning a railroad that will stretch all the way from Sacramento to Omaha, and excited by its commercial possibilities, we realised at the same time that we were witnessing an irrevocable change in the course of our lives and in the history of the nation.’

Not many Californians agreed with him. They had all turned out to see a new steam locomotive, and to hear some of Leland’s speechifying, but for the most part they were disinclined to believe that Collis and Leland and Andy and Charles were actually going to go so far as build this railroad all the way over the Sierras. One critic had written in the San Francisco newspapers that the Sierra Pacific was ‘nothing more than a swindifulous scheme to milk money out of innocent investors, and the State of California, too.’

Leland in particular had refrained from answering such criticisms. At Jane’s suggestion, he had recently persuaded the California legislature to grant the railroad $10,000 for every mile of track laid within the state boundaries, and he had used his influence as governor to coax the county authorities along the railroad’s right of way to subscribe half a million dollars in bonds. Now he was drawing up a proposition for a state bond issue which would give the company $600,000 in cash — and this would go before the voters of San Francisco in April, so Leland wasn’t exactly keen as mustard to get into a messy public scrap about swindles or confidence tricks.

Nonetheless, the Sierra Pacific was already running dangerously short of money. In 1863, the greater proportion of native Americans had never travelled further from their homes than a good day’s walk, and the notion of riding in a train for days on end at twenty-five miles per hour was too fantastic to be imagined. Even railroad experts were sceptical, particularly in the East, where the vast expanses of the western frontier seemed as remote as the moon. Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was in the middle of taking over the New York Central and Erie Lines between New York and Chicago, said, ‘Building a railroad from nowhere to nowhere at public expense is not a legitimate enterprise.’

Even as the first Sierra Pacific locomotive whistled a shrill note of celebration, and the wet bunting snapped in the cold afternoon wind, Theodore stood with his gaze directed at nothing further away than the damp planks of the platform beneath his feet. Annie held him as if she were supporting him, keeping him up under the great weight of his disillusionment and exhaustion.