How long was a work day on the transcontinental railroad?

From sunup to sundown. Sixteen hours or longer in the summer. In the Victorian era, civil engineers and railroad planners counted on a certain number of worker deaths per mile, and figured the cost of pensioning off the families into the cost of construction. Near where I live there is a rail line that was built in the 1880s, and it was said that the retired army general in charge "killed two men per mile" during the construction. They just threw the dead workers under the track ballast, and it is said that work crews on that line still occasionally unearth bones. That's the Broad River Division of the Southern, and the boss was General Lenoir.