[nitwit005]

You might recall California has a long history of employing Chinese immigrants for railroad construction.

In modern times, the biggest obstacle to new train routes tends to be acquiring the right of way. You generally have to buy up all the property in the path, or compensate people, and deal with the politics/lawsuits that generates. There are a number of public documents about programs for the high speed rail project: http://www.hsr.ca.gov/Programs/private_property.html