For histories of American railroad building in the 19th Century, see

Angevine, Robert G. The Railroad and the State: War, Politics, and Technology in Nineteenth-Century America. Stanford University Press, 2004.

Bianculli, Anthony J. Trains and Technology: The American Railroad in the Nineteenth Century. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2001.

Ward, James Arthur. Railroads and the Character of America, 1820-1887. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986.

See also this article by the author of this essay:

White, Richard. "Information, Markets, and Corruption: Transcontinental Railroads in the Gilded Age." Journal of American History 2003 90(1): 19-43.

American Memory’s “Railroad Maps, 1828-1900” segment is well worth looking at. Be sure to follow the links under “Understanding the Collection” and “The Learning Page”:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/rrhtml/rrhome.html

Wikipedia will serve you well on specifics like the Standard Gauge:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_gauge

And on the transcontinental railroad itself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad

Here are more websites and two recent books that focus on the construction of the first railroad spanning North America:

Ambrose, Stephen E. Nothing Like It In The World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Bain, David Haward. Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad. New York: Viking, 1999.

PBS’s 2003 American Experience film, Transcontinental Railroad, provides the basis for another of public television’s fine websites. The “Teacher’s Guide” offers useful suggestions and will help you navigate among segments, which include an interactive map students can use to trace the progress of the line’s construction: a gallery of images of people and places, and all sorts of other goodies:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/tcrr/tguide/index.php

And American Experience’s "The Great Transatlantic Cable" website offers an equally good website (and “Teacher’s Guide”) if you’d like to pursue that topic:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/cable/filmmore/index.php

The impact of the Civil War on rails is detailed in:

Clark, John Elmwood. Railroads in the Civil War: The Impact of Management on Victory and Defeat. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2001.

For examples of the impact of railroad expansion on national culture and one specific group of Americans, take a look at:

Hedin, Robert, ed. The Great Machines: Poems and Songs of the American Railroad. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996.

Richter, Amy G. Home on the Rails: Women, The Railroad, and the Rise of Public Domesticity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

In 1877 strike of railroad workers lasted 45 days and threatened to paralyze the nation. This is the most recent book on that milestone in American labor history:

Stowell, David O. Streets, Railroads, and the Great Strike of 1877. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

If you don’t need a booklength version, the Wikipedia article on the strike is a very helpful introduction with excellent links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Railroad_Strike

Finally, you can find the full text of the 1876 edition of The Pacific Tourist at the University of Michigan’s “Making of America” website:

http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=moa;idno=AFK1140