George Francis Train (March 24, 1829 – January 18, 1904)[1][2] was an American businessman who organized the clipper ship line that sailed around Cape Horn to San Francisco; he also organized the Union Pacific Railroad and the Credit Mobilier in the United States in 1864 to construct the eastern portion of the Transcontinental Railroad, and a horse tramway company in England while there during the American Civil War.

He believed that a report of his first journey in a French periodical inspired Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days; protagonist Phileas Fogg may have been modeled on him.

He attended common schools, where he acquired knowledge about different countries, got exposed to logical ways of thinking, and honed mechanical engineering skills using toy blocks and sticks.

Train entered the mercantile business in Boston, and made it his career all his life in the United States, Britain and in Australia.

In partnership with another American, former mariner Captain Ebenezer Caldwell, he imported clothing, building materials, guns, flour, patent medicines, mining tools, coaches and carts.

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.

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).

[11] 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.

[clarification needed] He promoted and built tramways in Britain after opposition which he overcame by agreeing to run the rails level with the streets.

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.

While appearing to be a separate, independent company which Union Pacific hired, Crédit Mobilier was staffed by the same officers as the railroad.

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.

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.

[14] He stood for the position of dictator of the United States, charged admission fees to campaign rallies, and drew record crowds.