Chapter 12 has been submitted to the mods and should be available soon.
Many of the emails and comments over the last few chapters have concerned type of fuel and the gauge I decided to use.
The early railroads in the US used wood as fuel. Although wood would continue to be used by many of the railroads in the northeast and south, by 1840 coal became the predominant fuel for most of the major railroads moving west, thanks principally to the work of Hopkin Thomas, a Welsh émigré. Thomas received his early training at the renowned Neath Abbey Ironwork in South Wales before moving on to the US where he worked building engines for Baldwin Steam Works. In 1834, he was hired away from Baldwin by Garrett & Eastwick Locomotive Works in Philadelphia to develop an anthracite-fired steam locomotive for both the Beaver Meadow Railroad & Coal Company and the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company.
Coal fired locomotives would become essential for US railroads especially those operating in the Midwest and West where trees were, and are, a scarce resource but coal was abundant. Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Montana had coal waiting for markets and economical transportation to be developed. Each would become major coal producers in the 1860-1900 with the arrival of the various railroads.
There were almost as many railroad track gauge standards in the 1850s as there were railroads. I selected the now standard gauge of four feet, eight and one half inches as the standard for the Thunderbird railroad as that was the gauge the Union Pacific would use. A few years later, the Atchison, Topeka, & Santa Fe Railroad would also use the same standard when it started building its railway operation. Pablo's aim is to connect to both lines, creating an early version of the transcontinental railroad, so it seemed to me that the track gauge of his Railroad should be the same.
My thanks to CoullPert who continues to find the odd non-possessive possessive apostrophes, disappearing words, and homonyms that manage to make their way into my chapters despite the best efforts of my editors and proofreaders.
A special thanks to Thornefoote who, unexpectedly, managed to come up with a way to nominate me for a Clitoride Award despite the fact that my stories don't ordinarily qualify for the awards. I deeply appreciate Thornefoote's nomination as Author if the Year and the many seconds from other readers.