‘Shorty’ Jim McGinty traded in his .577 caliber rifle for a sledgehammer–the destruction of the War between the States for the construction of a coast-to-coast transportation system powered by steam locomotives set on tracks.
After surviving the carnage as close as one can get–his hair was parted by a rebel bullet in the Battle of Cold Harbor–the spunky Irishman, thankful he was only 5’ 6” and not 5’ 6½”, returned to his hometown, Killdeer, Pennsylvania, to resume his most lucky life. But for him, Pokeyville, PA, became much too boring after experiencing the ‘glory’ of war, so he drifted out west, itching to start a new, more exciting one building railroads. McGinty was hired by Union Pacific in 1867, as the last fingers of the Intercontinental Railroad were being linked together.
His first tryst with steel rails, spikes, and heavy hammers began in Omaha, under crew foreman Jim Smythe’s guiding hand. Their first connection was a short line to Norfolk and the surrounding corn fields, then west to North Platte; then through Wyoming and the final hub, Denver. (Union Pacific’s bigwig, Thomas Clark Durant, hammered home that they were always to use the shortest available path even if a slightly lounger route would be faster, which was solid, practical advice for the straight flat ribbon through Nebraska, not so much through the granite peaks of the Rocky Mountains.)
With a growing population of 30,000 in Cheyenne, and an unimpeded rail line from Omaha to Denver delivering timber and wheat and meat and corn to the folks back east, the crew’s first task was completed, so Shorty moved on to the next chapter of his life, returning back east himself for a spell, helping lay a network of rails connecting Indianapolis, Toledo, Chicago, and Grand Rapids–towns that were rapidly expanding after the war that were now linked, hauling beer, lumber, fruits, vegetables, and milk all over the place.
Mr. Durant’s most challenging task was to run a passenger train from Toledo to Omaha–without stopping. To achieve this goal, Smythe's crew needed to construct a straight shot between the two cities, and a bridge over the Mississippi River near Rock Island. When the train transporting a hundred passengers whistled into the Nebraska city without a steel wheel’s revolution of rest, it unlocked another adventure, this one way out west.
The crew pounded in the first spikes in Sacramento and did not stop until the capital city connected with San Francisco, Redding, and Gold Beach with trains set to carry passengers and mail; then from Shasta to the north and Carson City to the east with trains set to carry gold. Soon, supply trains chugged in and out from Winnemucca, Elko, and Salt Lake City warehouses (although running a railway line through the Indian camp might have proven fatal had not Union Pacific compensated the tribe, for once….). At last, the country was united by two parallel ribbons of steel!
All told, Shorty McGinty helped lay down a total network of 2,337 miles of train track and was ready to do it a million over again, because you see, after being killed instantly when shot in the head by one of Lee’s rebels in the Battle of Cold Harbor, he, in some-in-the-hell-way, woke up 158 years later in a railroad construction and management simulation video game developed by Gaming Minds Studios and published by Kalypso Media, with the artwork created by Bruno Frasca and Daniel Lieske. The poor digitized soul thinks the life he’s living is one of spikes and rails and train stations, but the truth is, it's one of ones and zeroes and PlayStations.
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(Author’s note: Shorty McGinty is the worker in suspenders, second from the locomotive, in the screen grab accompanying this story. How he went from a Civil War battlefield to a 21st century video game is beyond me, as I don’t write these stories, they are merely dictated by the characters relating them to me. CraigE
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