Maggie's Farm

My impression was that the Federal government, working at first through various states, both provided the vast bulk of the lands used for the railroad right-of-way (plus lands adjacent that could be sold off) and that the government issued bonds to fund the construction.

There were bits and extensions that were fully privately funded, but as i recall none of the 4 transcontinental railroads was without large sections built with federal aid.

Plus tons of money up front that wouldn't need to be fully repaid until the 20th century, at below-market interest rates -- and government guarantee of interest payments on the private bonds issued by the Union and Central pacific railroads.

The Union Pacific alone was funded by the federal government to the tune of $100 million 1862 dollars, about $2.5 billion in today's dollars.

Note that I am not arguing for-or-against anyone's argument, I'm just pointing out that a detail in a comment was not actually true.

It seems that I misinterpreted the wikipedia article on the Credit Mobilier scandal where it said "The federal government in 1864–1868 had authorized and chartered the Union Pacific Railroad and provided it with capital of $100 million to complete a transcontinental line west from the Missouri River to the Pacific coast."

They allowed the company to issue stock shares "valued" in sum at $100 million (100,000 shares of $1000 each), the actual cash from bonds provided to UPRR is a bit hard to pin down.

In 1897 it was reported that the total owed to the federal government by UP for then outstanding 1st mortgage bonds was $54,731,000 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/1883646 p 436) and if you add up just the "per mile" issuance of the government bonds accounting for terrain you get a little more then $28 million.