Thomas Clark Durant was an American physician, businessman, and financier. He was vice-president of the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) in 1869 when it met with the Central Pacific railroad at Promontory Summit in Utah Territory. He created the financial structure that led to the Crédit Mobilier scandal. He was interested in hotels in the Adirondacks and once owned the yacht Idler.
Thomas C. Durant
The Union Pacific Railroad is a Class I freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over 32,200 miles (51,800 km) routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Pacific is the second largest railroad in the United States after BNSF, with which it shares a duopoly on transcontinental freight rail lines in the Western, Midwestern and West South Central United States.
UP 2723 leading a train eastbound near inland California.
The Last Spike, by Thomas Hill (1881)
Directors of the Union Pacific Railroad gather on the 100th meridian, which later became Cozad, Nebraska, about 250 miles (400 km) west of Omaha in the Nebraska Territory, in October 1866. The train in the background awaits the party of Eastern capitalists, newspapermen, and other prominent figures invited by the railroad executives.
Intermodal terminal just outside Santa Teresa, New Mexico, used for exchanging freight with trucks from Mexico