Hell On Wheels season 2 finale question

[Abilene]

Potential minor spoiler alert!  There were several important happenings in this 2 hour season finale, and I won't mention any of them here, just a small thing at the very end.  But if you haven't seen the episode yet and don't want to know ANYTHING about it, then don't read further.

At the end Cullen takes a staff and a red strip of cloth and walks out the tracks a mile or so from the town and pushes the staff into the ground beside the track and ties the red cloth around it, then starts walking back to the town.  I'm trying to figure out what that meant and don't want to wait until next season 

[Fingers McGee]

I believe they were using the red flags to indicate start and end points for amount of track to be laid in a day.  I'd say cullen was marking the point where he was taking over the building of the railroad.

[Abilene]

Well, I thought it might be a marker like that, but it looked kind of like the track continued on from that point already, although you couldn't see how far.  And it appeared that the town he had walked from was in the background, and the track continues past the town and over the new bridge.  Which brings up another question for me...seems the town hasn't really moved since the series started.  There are a lot of tents but several wooden buildings as well.  I would have thought the town would need to be mobile and move with the track's progress westward.

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[PJ Hardtack]

Santy towns of tents and false front buildings would have been highly portable.

I was wondering why that black labourer was the man operating the Gatling gun. Where were the soldiers? They weren't all necessary for that field piece at the other location.

And can we be sure that the Norwegian creep really was killed by the fall from the trestle? I would have emptied my gun at him and then hauled the body ashore to be sure.

You gotta feel for Anson Mont's character. How much pain and suffering can a man endure? Two loves of his life killed violently. That would push most men over the edge.

[Sam Cobra]

I wondered about the marker myself...lots of plot twists there.  Mr Toole, Lily, the Swede, the preacher girl and the marriage...wild ending!

[Bugscuffle]

I was of the opinion that in railroad language a red marker of any kind, flag, light, whatever, meant STOP! That would make sense if he was leaving a mesage for the previous builders.