Wait, what?
The Canadian National is the first transcontinental railroad in North America.
The UP/NS will be the first US railroad to have coast to coast tracks.
“”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....
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.)
AP writers.