(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . In America, will railroad ‘transcontinentalization’ ever be a thing? [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2026-04-05 Diarist’s note: This was originally posted on All About Trains on Sept. 8, 2024, the post having the title: “Commentary: Will The U.S. Ever Have A Railroad Coast To Coast?” It’s food for thought. It’s a conversation that comes up every once in a while. Well, it’s come up again — here. It could be argued, though loosely, that America already has a “transcon.” that is, a transcontinental rail carrier: Amtrak. So, here’s the rub. As we all know domestic railroading’s main competition is trucking. If the lading is time-sensitive, more often than not it travels via highway. If the cargo, on the other hand, is: low-to-medium priority, bulk in nature, to be dispatched short-, medium- or long-distance, less-than-carload by definition, it could — though not necessarily so — find its way inside or onto railroad cars and placed into the consist of a train. I mentioned bulk. Bulk shipments like the others could very well be meant for hauling on trains, but, depending on the physical properties of the material or product, whatever the case may be, it could be delivered by pipeline, barge or ship. So there is no one item to be transported that is absolutely captive to rail. That’s the first thing to remember. However, if shipping parameters provide for traffic being transported by train coast to coast, would single-carrier service be all that important or, for that matter, at all necessary? Justification for So, what could be a possible reason for creating a single railroad line from the Atlantic to the Pacific coasts in the United States? What comes to mind are improved transit times and simplification of the customer billing process. What I don’t see is how such a move would benefit the rail outfit providing the shipping service per se. And, as I see it, before railroads would even get onboard, there would need to be sufficient cause or justification for doing so. To provide a bit of background, the Burlington Northern in 1980 acquired the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway, known colloquially as the Frisco. By virtue of this addition, the railroad reached from the Pacific Northwest and Canada to the American Southeast, although the pike came short of reaching the Atlantic Ocean. It did however, reach the Gulf Coast region. That was the closest any railroad domestically at any time ever came to being a true transcontinental. Sometime subsequent to the merging of the Burlington Northern with the Santa Fe Railway in 1995, meanwhile, the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway or BNSF got rid of (through sale if I recall correctly) its former Frisco Birmingham, Alabama-to-Pensacola, Florida trackage. It could have been that for this mega railroad, owning this property just didn’t pencil out. The railroad apparently didn’t see any economic advantage in owning this track segment. Now to this notion of improved transit times resulting from a coast-to-coast rail venture. That could theoretically come about. And, if realized, a one line coast-to-coast rail link has the potential to make freight railroading more competitive with trucking. A while ago I read where there was a truck-driver shortage. I don’t know what the status of that situation is now. However, there is at least one potential work-around. It goes by the name autonomous (driverless) trucking. It is important to remember that the technology or capability is still in its infancy. But that doesn’t mean that such won’t evolve and improve over time. Should such driverless truck operation ever be deployed universally, the driver once and for all time being permanently removed from the equation, the outcome, insiders hope, will make for more efficient and streamlined highway-based freight delivery. Such would then almost guarantee railroad transcontinentalization as a non-starter. And now for the all-important question: Is there any type of lading existing presently, conveyed either by train or truck, that actually moves coast to coast. There is. What comes to mind is trans-shipments, specifically, those containers off-loaded from a ship calling at say a west-coast-based port, the container then placed onto, say, a deep-well doublestack car for one, and train-forwarded to an east-coast-based port, with said lading ultimately ending up on a port-berthed container ship that could be headed to wherever, in this scenario, the train in effect in this case serving in the role of land-bridge. Again, in creating a transcon., the practicality of such a move would need to be borne out. The reality on the ground is that this would all be contingent on interested railroads, if there are any, being onboard, meaning merger between agreeing railroads would be de rigueur. Should such a union come about, it follows then that a second such merger would be in the offing, and if that were to play out, the number of Class I’s would be reduced from six to four, a prospect in my mind’s eye that seems extremely unlikely. Never Say Never Though a transcontinental rail carrier appears highly improbable, it can’t be completely ruled out either. FYI, Canada is the only North American country where true railroad transcontinentalization is an actual thing. Notes In an earlier version, the sentence “Should such a union come about, it follows then that a second such merger would be in the offing, and if that were to play out, the number of Class I’s would be reduced from four to two, a prospect in my mind’s eye that seems extremely unlikely” appeared. That particular statement had in it information that was incorrect. It has since been revised, the previous incorrect information now correct. Updated: Aug. 14, 2025 at 6:21 a.m. PDT. All material copyrighted 2024, Alan Kandel. All Rights Reserved. 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