which either sailed around South America's Cape Horn, or offloaded the cargo at the Isthmus of Panama, where it was sent across via paddle steamer and the Panama Railroad. The Panama Railroad gauge was , which was incompatible with the gauge used by the CPRR equipment. The latter route was about twice as expensive per pound. Once the machinery and tools reached the San Francisco Bay area, they were put aboard river paddle steamers which transported them up the final of the Sacramento River to the new state capital in Sacramento. Many of these steam engines, railroad cars, and other machinery were shipped dismantled and had to be reassembled. Wooden timbers for railroad ties, trestles, bridges, firewood, and telegraph poles were harvested in California and transported to the project site. The Union Pacific Railroad did not start construction for another 18 months until July 1865. They were delayed by difficulties obtaining financial backing and the unavailability of workers and materials due to the Civil War. Their start point in the new city of Omaha, Nebraska was not yet connected via railroad to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Equipment needed to begin work was initially delivered to Omaha and Council Bluffs by paddle steamers on the Missouri River. The Union Pacific was so slow in beginning construction during 1865 that they sold two of the four steam locomotives they had purchased. After the U.S. Civil War ended in 1865, the Union Pacific still competed for railroad supplies with companies who were building or repairing railroads in the south, and prices rose. Rail standards At that time in the United States, there were two primary standards for track gauge, as defined by the distance between the two rails. In Britain, the gauge was , and this had been adopted by the majority of northern railways. But much of the south had adopted a gauge. Transferring railway cars across a break of gauge required changing out the trucks. Alternatively, cargo was offloaded and reloaded, a time-consuming effort that delayed cargo shipments. For the transcontinental railroad, the builders adopted what is now known as the standard gauge. The Bessemer process and open hearth furnace steel-making were in use by 1865, but the advantages of steel rails which lasted much longer than iron rails had not yet been demonstrated. The rails used initially in building the railway were nearly all made of an iron flat-bottomed modified I-beam