Another "Taggart".
Posted on 07/29/2025 1:40:37 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Union Pacific wants to buy Norfolk Southern in a $85 billion deal that would create the first transcontinental railroad in the U.S, and potentially trigger a final wave of rail mergers across the country.
The proposed merger, announced Tuesday, would marry Union Pacific’s vast rail network in the West with Norfolk’s rails that snake across the Eastern United States. The combined railroad would include more than 50,000 miles of track in 43 states with connections to major ports on both coasts.
The nation was first linked by rail in 1869, when a golden railroad spike was driven in Utah to symbolize the connection of East and West Coasts. Yet no single entity has controlled that coast-to-coast passage.
The railroads argue a merger would streamline deliveries of raw materials and goods nationwide by eliminating delays when shipments are handed off between railroads. […]
The nation’s largest rail union, SMART-TD, quickly opposed the merger over concerns of jeopardizing progress that Norfolk Southern has made in safety and labor relations since its disastrous 2023 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The union said that Union Pacific’s record is troubling on safety, and treatment of workers. …
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
They could call it "Southern Pacific". { snicker }
Those must have been golden years in Chicago back then,
“”The nation was first linked by rail in 1869, when a golden railroad spike was driven in Utah to symbolize the connection of East and West Coasts. Yet no single entity has controlled that coast-to-coast passage.””
I had the same question but I guess the above explains it..seems kind of picayune, doesn’t it to narrow it down to being the first because there wasn’t a “single entity” before this merger...it WAS the first so the “single entity” shouldn’t change it...
KNOW what I’m sayin’? Couldn’t resist it....
“”and now it ticks loudly in my bedroom.””
It needs its own bedroom or under a pillow!
I own stock in these. Should be good for me.
I own stock in these. Should be good for me.
Sweet story.
Gonna place a big order of Reardon Steel.
Gonna build a track right to the Gulch.
I had the same thought. See my #28.
“The only inheritance I have from my father’s father is his Elgin pocket watch”
My Grandfather was a Fireman on the NC&StL and an engineer on the L&N out of Nashville. I had two of his Elgin’s and had one repaired which I carried and have since sent to my son in Nashville. I have a great picture of him hanging out of the cab of NC&StL engine 559 the sister of which resides in Centennial Park in Nashville.
A machinist could make one for you.
How lovely.
The first “transcontinental” railroad was a junction of the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific; the final stretch west to the Pacific was on the Western Pacific. So to get from Missouri River to the Pacific ocean one would have had to travel on three different railroads.
Arguably, both the UP and the BNSF are transcontinental as the UP goes to the Gulf of Mexico at Houston and New Orleans, and BNSF does as well.
Canadian National can get from the Pacific to Mobile or New Orleans. (Or Nova Scotia if they want to stay in Canada.)
That sure would be ironic, what with UP having bought SP back in 1996.
AP writers.
Monopolies aren’t conducive to reversing that.
1. railroad = a system of tracks on rights-of-way that carry trains
2. railroad = a company that operates a system of tracks and trains
In 1869, the U.S. got its first transcontinental railroad under Definition #1.
If this UP-NS merger is approved, the U.S. will get its first transcontinental railroad under Definition #2.
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