Construction of the first Transcontinental Telegraph, with a Pony Express rider passing below. Wood engraving after George M. Ottinger (d. 1919). The transcontinental telegraph did not make the Pony Express redundant because of the high costs of sending a telegram over a long distance, but the transcontinental railroad, completed in 1861, made it far cheaper and faster to send mail over the distance in which the Pony Express briefly operated.