"It also became clear that the treacherous route taken by the Central Pacific blasting through the Sierra Nevada Mountains was more of a matter of financial begging than passenger convenience."

Say what? You got a better candidate for where to cross the Sierra than Donner? Or is the issue that it needed snowsheds? What did they want, a 50-mile-long tunnel? In the 1860s?

What's the beef with what the CP did? It looks to me like there wasn't much other way to build it and still cross the Sierras.