George Francis Train

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Train entered the mercantile business in Boston, and made it his career all his life in the United States, Britain and in Australia. He initiated numerous new businesses, building the corporate and financial structures to make them work.

He and his wife arrived in Melbourne on 23 May 1853 aboard the Bavaria, where he became the local agent for the White Diamond Line. In partnership with another American, former mariner Captain Ebenezer Caldwell, he imported clothing, building materials, guns, flour, patent medicines, mining tools, coaches and carts. Caldwell, Train & Co. built warehouses at either end of the newly constructed railway line from Sandridge to Flinders St, making it easier for White Star Line passengers to move their luggage between port and city. He was involved in the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce and he helped establish a volunteer fire brigade in the city.

Train's wife returned to Boston in 1854 to give birth to their daughter. He left Australia in November 1855 to join her, travelling via the Orient and the Middle East.

In 1860 he went to England to found horse tramway companies in Birkenhead and London, where he soon met opposition. He was also involved in the construction of a short-lived horse tramway in Cork, Ireland. Although his trams were popular with passengers, his designs had rails that stood above the road surface and obstructed other traffic. In 1861 Train was arrested and tried for "breaking and injuring" Uxbridge Road in London. He tried again with the Darlington Street Railroad Company in 1862, but it too was short-lived, closing in 1865.

Train was involved in the formation of the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) in 1864 during the American Civil War. The federal government chartered the railroad for construction of the portion of the Transcontinental Railroad west of the Missouri River. Train helped set up the shadow finance company for the project, the Credit Mobilier of America, whose principal officers were the same as those of UP. (See below)

That year, he left the United States for England. Referring to himself as "Citizen Train", Train became a shipping magnate, a prolific writer, a minor presidential candidate after return to the United States, and a confidant of French and Australian revolutionaries. He claimed to have been offered the presidency of a proposed Australian republic, but declined. During the American Civil War, he gave numerous speeches in England in favor of the Union and denounced the Confederacy.

In 1868 Train was arrested while aboard the RMS Scotia in the port of Queenstown (now Cobh) in Ireland, and held in custody. He had in his possession speeches he had given in the United States in defense of the Fenian cause of Irish independence. These documents were seized by a local magistrate. His release four days later was on condition that he disavow any intention of promoting Fenianism while in Ireland or England.

In the middle of his campaign for president in 1870, Train decided to make a trip around the globe, which was covered by many newspapers. The actual traveling took 80 days, though he stayed two months in France, supporting the Paris Commune, for which he spent two weeks in jail (the US government and Alexandre Dumas intervened to get him released). His exploits possibly inspired Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days; the protagonist Phileas Fogg is believed to have been partially modeled on Train.

While in Europe after his 1870 trip, Train met with the Grand Duke Constantine. During that period, he persuaded the Queen of Spain to back construction of a railway in the backwoods of Pennsylvania. Her support provided funding for the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad. He promoted and built tramways in Britain after opposition which he overcame by agreeing to run the rails level with the streets.

On his return to the U.S., Train's popularity and reputation soared. He began promoting the Union Pacific Railroad, with which he had been involved for several years, despite the advice of Vanderbilt, who told him it would never work. Forming a finance company called Credit Foncier of America, Train made a fortune from real estate when the transcontinental railway opened up for colonization huge swaths of western America, including large amounts of land in Council Bluffs, Iowa; Omaha, Nebraska; and Columbus, Nebraska. He was responsible for building the Cozzens Hotel and founding Train Town in Omaha.

Train was noted for having created the Credit Mobilier in 1864, started to finance the Union Pacific. While appearing to be a separate, independent company which Union Pacific hired, Crédit Mobilier was staffed by the same officers as the railroad. Train and others created a structure that allowed them to realize outsize profits during the railroad's construction. The story about this scam and congressional graft was broken in 1872 by The Sun, a New York newspaper opposed to the re-election of Ulysses S. Grant for president. Eventually the scandals resulted in congressional and executive federal investigations which implicated numerous congressmen, including James Garfield. Denying the charges, Grant was re-elected as president.

In 1872, Train ran for president of the United States as an independent candidate. He was a supporter of the temperance movement. That year, he was jailed on obscenity charges while defending Victoria Woodhull for her newspaper's reporting of the alleged adulterous affair of abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Tilton. He was the primary financier of the newspaper The Revolution, which was dedicated to women's rights and published by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

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