2. determine how these advantages helped bring more people to the West.

1. The teacher should explain that a Transcontinental Railroad, stretching from the east coast to the west coast, was built to transport people, supplies, and food across the United States. Resources such as All Aboard! The Story of Passenger Trains , by Phillip Ault, may be used to add pictures and other information to the discussion. The May, 1980, issue of "Cobblestone Magazine" is also devoted to the Transcontinental Railroad.

2. Students should be asked to first identify the problems with wagon travel, then identify the advantages of rail travel. Brainstorming lists may be written on the board.

3. Students should discuss with the teacher how rail travel helped to develop the West, making sure to include: speed, comfort, safety, and employment.

4. Another source of information about travel on the Transcontinental Railroad is Across America on an Immigrant Train_, by Jim Murphy. The teacher may read significant portions of this story to the class, individual students could report on the book, or the whole class could read it together.

5. As a culminating activity, students should create advertisement posters for rail travel which express advantages of traveling by train. The teacher may give examples of such advertising, using Locomotive Advertising in America. For example, students may hang their advertisements around the room.

Ault, Phillip H. All Aboard! The Story of Passenger Trains. (New York: Mead Publishers, 1976).

McCready, Albert L. Railroads in the Days of Steam. (New York: American Heritage Publishing Company, 1960).

Murphy, Jim. Across America on an Immigrant Train. (New York: Clarion Books, 1993) (ISBN 0395633907).