profile weighing or . The railroad companies were intent on completing the project as rapidly as possible at a minimum cost. Within a few years, nearly all railroads converted to steel rails. Time zones and telegraph usage Time was not standardized across the United States and Canada until November 18, 1883. In 1865, each railroad set its own time to minimize scheduling errors. To communicate easily up and down the line, the railroads built telegraph lines alongside the tracks. These lines eventually superseded the original First Transcontinental Telegraph which followed much of the Mormon Trail up the North Platte River and across the very thinly populated Central Nevada Route through central Utah and Nevada. The telegraph lines along the railroad were easier to protect and maintain. Many of the original telegraph lines were abandoned as the telegraph business was consolidated with the railroad telegraph lines. Union Pacific route The Union Pacific's of track started at MP 0.0 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on the eastern side of the Missouri River. Omaha was chosen by President Abraham Lincoln as the location of its Transfer Depot where up to seven railroads could transfer mail and other goods to Union Pacific trains bound for the west. Trains were initially transported across the Missouri River by ferry before they could access the western tracks beginning in Omaha, Nebraska Territory. The river froze in the winter, and the ferries were replaced by sleighs. A bridge was not built until 1872, when the Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge was completed. After the rail line's initial climb through the Missouri River bluffs west of Omaha and out of the Missouri River Valley, the route bridged the Elkhorn River and then crossed over the new Loup River bridge as it followed the north side of the Platte River valley west through Nebraska along the general path of the Oregon, Mormon and California Trails. By December 1865, the Union Pacific had only completed of track, reaching Fremont, Nebraska, and a further of roadbed. At the end of 1865, Peter A. Dey, Chief Engineer of the Union Pacific, resigned over a routing dispute with Thomas C. Durant, one of the chief financiers of the Union Pacific. With the end of the Civil War and increased government supervision in the offing, Durant hired his former M&M engineer Grenville M. Dodge to build the railroad, and the Union Pacific began a mad dash