Her husband worked for the government. He did not earn much money and the family was growing quickly. Nadezhda wanted her husband to be rich. At this time the steam engine had recently been invented, and railways were just starting to be built in Russia. Nadezhda thought her husband could earn a lot of money building railways. She was right. As an engineer he became responsible for buildings thousands of miles of railroad tracks. The new railways allowed grain to be transported from Central Russia to places like Moscow.