No, folks had no problem with the CP/UP like this. They actually had handled and fed horses, mules, and even oxen. Farmers had shipped crops, including things like wheat and corn, by wagon, and knew that the ho3/4 of the profits. Business people had paid enormous shipping costs to get freight across Panama, or around the horn by ship.

So no,s your assertion, if you look at the history of the times in which the UP/CP were built, about 98% of folks looked on the RR's as "progress", which would improve mobility and bring access (opening up the west???) and bring economic benefit. That doesn't mean 98% of the public, loved the corruption, it don't mean they didn't like RR monopolies (which take those cost savings and economic benefits and puts them into monopolistic robber baron pockets), but their solution back then, wasn't to oppose RR;s. but to build another RR, to compete and drive down shipping and travel costs.

Hell, even the train robbers couldn't wait for the train to come to town.....a whole new career path was opened up, even for the criminal classes, as robbing trains was way easier "work", than rustling cattle.

With the original UP/CP "Pacific Railroad Act" construction 150 years ago, it wasn't until they finished and folks realized how much they'd stolen to do it with the Credit Mobilier scandal at the UP. Stanford, Crocker, Huntington, and Hopkin had either good sense, or good luck, when the CP archives, and financial records on the construction contracts conveniently went up in flames.

Unlike with the CP, we didn't have a brilliant Theodore Judah, to design the CHSRA, based on real transportation demands, with real cost constraints, and sound technical requirements, who built a line, still making money today.