Updated 2026-08-23intermediate

TOEFL Reading Practice #013 — The Railroad Built From Both Ends

Free TOEFL Reading practice: The Railroad Built From Both Ends. 11 questions with a full passage and answer key.

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How to use this practice: Read the passage once without a dictionary, then answer the questions on your own. Tap “Answer” under each question to reveal just the correct letter — no explanations, so you can keep testing yourself.
1

Passage

Read the full passage. Bracketed letters like [A] mark the four positions for the insert-text question.

The Railroad Built From Both Ends

¶1 Before 1869, traveling across the United States from the East Coast to California took months. People crossed by a slow wagon trip through mountains and deserts, or by ship around South America. In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a law that authorized two companies to build a single railroad connecting the two coasts. The Union Pacific would start in Omaha, Nebraska, and lay track heading west across the plains. The Central Pacific would start in Sacramento, California, and lay track heading east into the mountains. The two lines were meant to meet somewhere in between and form one continuous transcontinental railroad.

¶2 Central Pacific crews reached the Sierra Nevada mountains within the first year of construction, and progress almost stopped there. The granite there was far too hard for ordinary digging, and no railroad had ever cut through mountains this steep before. To solve the problem, the company hired thousands of Chinese immigrant laborers. They used hand drills and black powder to blast tunnels straight through the rock. Because the work itself was slow and dangerous, and because heavy snow buried the mountainside for months at a time, some tunnels took more than a year each to finish. Slow as it was, this method solved the one problem that had stopped every earlier plan. It meant sending a train through solid granite instead of around it.

¶3 Once Central Pacific broke through the mountains, the work looked completely different. [A] On the other side, the land flattened into desert basins, and the pace of construction suddenly changed. [B] Farther east, Union Pacific crews on the open plains of Nebraska had already been moving at that speed for years. Laying track on flat ground required a far simpler technique than tunneling through rock. Workers set wooden ties, dropped rails on top, and hammered them into place. [C] On April 28, 1869, one crew used this technique to lay more than ten miles of track in under twelve hours, a new record. [D] That record has never been broken since.

¶4 Even with both companies building at record speed, one problem remained: nobody had fixed the exact point where the two lines would finally meet. Because each company was paid by the mile of track it laid, both kept building past each other without stopping. For a while, crews from the two companies worked parallel routes only a few miles apart. Congress finally stepped in and set the meeting point at Promontory Summit, in the Utah Territory. On May 10, 1869, workers drove a ceremonial golden spike into the final rail, joining the two lines into a single railroad. A trip that had once taken months by wagon or ship could now be made in about a week. The Central Pacific's mountain crossing and the Union Pacific's plains crossing had once seemed like separate problems. By 1869, the same railroad, built from both ends, had solved both.

  • granite: an extremely hard type of rock
  • black powder: an explosive powder used before modern dynamite became common
2

Questions

11 questions — every TOEFL Reading question type, in test order.

Q1 · Vocabulary
The word authorized in paragraph 1 ("signed a law that authorized two companies to build a single railroad connecting the two coasts") is closest in meaning to
  1. A. financially supported
  2. B. officially allowed
  3. C. personally supervised
  4. D. publicly announced
Answer
Correct: B
Q2 · Reference
The phrase this technique in paragraph 3 ("one crew used this technique to lay more than ten miles of track in under twelve hours") refers to
  1. A. building two railroads that would meet in the middle
  2. B. blasting tunnels through granite with black powder
  3. C. setting wooden ties, dropping rails on top, and hammering them into place
  4. D. the record set on April 28, 1869
Answer
Correct: C
Q3 · Essential Term
Based on the information in the passage, the term transcontinental railroad can best be explained as
  1. A. a railroad built entirely by one company from coast to coast
  2. B. a railroad used only to carry mail across the country
  3. C. the short section of track built through the Sierra Nevada mountains
  4. D. a continuous railroad connecting the eastern and western United States, built as two separate lines that joined into one
Answer
Correct: D
Q4 · Factual Information
According to paragraph 2, why did progress almost stop when Central Pacific crews reached the Sierra Nevada mountains?
  1. A. The granite there was too hard for ordinary digging, and no railroad had ever cut through mountains this steep before
  2. B. Laborers refused to work in the mountains
  3. C. The company ran out of money before reaching the mountains
  4. D. Congress ordered construction to pause
Answer
Correct: A
Q5 · Negative Fact
According to paragraph 4, all of the following are true EXCEPT
  1. A. Congress set the meeting point at Promontory Summit in the Utah Territory
  2. B. Workers drove a ceremonial golden spike into the final rail on May 10, 1869
  3. C. Each company was paid by the mile of track it laid
  4. D. The two companies agreed on the exact meeting point before construction began
Answer
Correct: D
Q6 · Sentence Simplification
Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in paragraph 2? Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.

Highlighted: "Because the work itself was slow and dangerous, and because heavy snow buried the mountainside for months at a time, some tunnels took more than a year each to finish."
  1. A. Some tunnels took more than a year to complete because the work itself was slow and dangerous, and because heavy snow covered the mountains for months at a time.
  2. B. Heavy snow fell for months because the tunnels took so long to build.
  3. C. All tunnels took over a year to finish because conditions were dangerous.
  4. D. Some tunnels were difficult to build in the mountains.
Answer
Correct: A
Q7 · Inference
Based on the information in paragraphs 2 and 3, what can be inferred about why the Union Pacific was able to move faster than the Central Pacific in the early years of construction?
  1. A. The Union Pacific had more workers than the Central Pacific
  2. B. The Union Pacific started construction a year earlier than the Central Pacific
  3. C. The Union Pacific built across flat, open plains, while the Central Pacific had to blast tunnels through solid granite mountains
  4. D. The Central Pacific refused to hire enough laborers
Answer
Correct: C
Q8 · Rhetorical Purpose
The author mentions that on April 28, 1869, one crew laid more than ten miles of track in under twelve hours in order to
  1. A. prove that the Central Pacific was a larger company than the Union Pacific
  2. B. show how much faster construction became once crews reached open, flat ground
  3. C. argue that the record was later broken by another railroad
  4. D. explain why Congress had to set an official meeting point
Answer
Correct: B
Q9 · Paragraph Relation
How does paragraph 3 relate to paragraph 2?
  1. A. It shows the dramatic increase in construction speed once the difficult mountain work described in paragraph 2 was finished
  2. B. It contradicts the claim in paragraph 2 that mountain tunneling was necessary
  3. C. It describes a different company that replaced the Central Pacific
  4. D. It repeats the explanation of why the granite was hard to cut
Answer
Correct: A
Q10 · Insert Text
Look at the four squares [■] in paragraph 3 that indicate where the following sentence could be added.

It let crews cover in a single day what had once taken them weeks to cut through solid rock.

Where would the sentence best fit?
  1. A. Square A
  2. B. Square B
  3. C. Square C
  4. D. Square D
Answer
Correct: C
Q11 · Prose Summary Select THREE · 2 pts
Directions: An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is provided below. Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that express the most important ideas in the passage. Some sentences do not belong in the summary because they express ideas that are not presented in the passage or are minor ideas in the passage. This question is worth 2 points.

In 1862, the U.S. government authorized two companies to build a single railroad connecting the East and West coasts, and each company had to overcome a different obstacle before the two lines could finally meet in Utah in 1869.

  1. A. Central Pacific crews used hand drills and black powder to blast tunnels through the granite of the Sierra Nevada mountains, the hardest obstacle either company faced.
  2. B. Union Pacific started building in Omaha, Nebraska, while Central Pacific started in Sacramento, California.
  3. C. Once past the mountains, crews could lay track on flat ground far faster than before, including a construction record set in a single day.
  4. D. Workers drove a ceremonial golden spike into the final rail on May 10, 1869.
  5. E. Because construction was paid by the mile, Congress had to step in and fix the exact meeting point before the two lines could finally join.
  6. F. Chinese immigrant laborers made up a large share of the workforce that built the Central Pacific's route.
Answer
Correct: A, C, E