See BS Sunday morning did a story of the golden spike historical park and the completion of the transcontinental railroad. The story was hijacked by their story line that Chinese laborers built the railroad. Cheap labor did not build that railroad. Engineers and businessmen with Anglo-European backgrounds built that railroad. The labor could have supplied by almost any ethnic group. The Chinese offered nothing special to the effort. Scots/Irish probably built the eastern segment, Along with Italians and Russians and Germans ,etc, etc.
The Irish who are European did much of the very hard labor of that era. They also built railroads and dug canals.