re: #92 Anymouse 🌹

Although in real life railroads were granted their land by the government, and granted a checkerboard pattern of sections of land on opposite sides of the right-of-way they could use or sell.

Trans-continental railroads in the USA were a massive government-funded project.

I think the reference was not to the land acquisition, but to the process of actually building the railroad upon the land they were granted. The first transcontinental railroad was rife with exploitation of imported labor from China and Mexico.