Is it possible to get tickets on the original US Transcontinental Railroad nowadays? I thought it was, but I can’t figure out how to google and get something that’s not about the history. Thanks!
Its getting pretty tough to even find a spike from the old rail beds, from what I’ve heard. You could do it by 4 wheeler, if you wanted to experience what it was like to go that distance and see that view.
Hasn’t Amtrak taken over all railroad passenger traffic in the U.S.? You can certainly use Amtrak to get across country by a variety of routes. none of them very direct. You’d have to do some research to see if any of these follow the trackbeds of the original Union Pacific or Southern Pacific Railroads, although the California Zephyr and the Southwest Chief routes have lots of stops out of that history.
I was being serious in my response, btw… I actually had the same question at one time because I wanted to see the views that you’d see in the late 1800s going by train. That and trains rock.
Amtrak’s California Zephyr runs between Oakland and Chicago, and from the map it looks like it follows the original route fairly closely. It runs through Provo, UT, where the Golden Spike was driven in 1869.
It should be noted, however that the “Transcontinental Railroad” is something of a misnomer in that it wasn’t one specific route from coast to coast. There was already a significant rail network in the eastern part of the country well before the Golden Spike was driven. East of Chicago, the TR could have been just about any part of it.
Amtrak’s California Zephyr follows the route all the way. Only a few local alterations in the route have ever been made, most notably away from Promontory, Utah where the Golden Spike was driven, unfortunately.
Simulpost. The route was actually only from Omaha to Sacramento. The Rock Island Line already ran from Chicago to Council Bluffs, Iowa, across the river from Omaha. A connecting bridge was built late in the project.
Well consider my ignorance fought.
I must’ve been thinking about another (abandoned) Transcontinental RR stretch of some miles I was told about by a RR spike collector.
Yup… gonna back out of this thread… I’ll bring pie next time.
Doing this from memory, so forgive me if I get some details wrong. The route of Amtrak’s San Francisco Zephyr comes closest to following the route of the original (1869) transcon, but there have been many changes and little of its route actually is on original roadbed today. From Oakland eastward to roughly the NV-UT border, mostly the original route. From there to Salt Lake City, the current route takes to a causeway and cuts across the Great Salt Lake to the south of the longer, now abandoned original line. Until the 1980s the train ran Salt Lake to Denver on Union Pacific’s original transcon line through Wyoming via Cheyenne; now it takes the more scenic ex-DRGW line through Colorado and the Moffat tunnel (the Wyoming line is still used for freight and occasionally as an Amtrak detour route). East of Denver the train follows the BNSF (ex-Burlington) route to Chicago. The UP Cheyenne- Chicago line (the remainder of the original transcon) is freight-only.
I’ve taken the SFZ several times and it was for me a highly enjoyable trip, very scenic if not the most historically representative of the Transcon. If you want to inspect the actual route, it’s best to do it by car: going westward, pick up old US 30 in Nebraska, then I-80 west from Cheyenne.
Whoops, as others have mentioned, California Zephyr is the current name; SFZ was the name when I last rode that train in the late '70s.
Minor nitpick, but the Golden Spike was driven in Promontory Point, Utah . Provo is quite some distance away, although I think it is worth the drive to see such a slice of history. The drive will take you a good hour and a half from Salt Lake City, and if you go, you need to also stop by the rocket display presented by Morton Thiokol and only a mile or two off the path.
Thanks to everyone for the great info. SDMB rules! 
The train is called the Zephyr because that was a Burlington streamliner in the old days. Ah, the CB&Q (Chicago, Burlington and Quincy). Don’t you just love those old railroad names?
It also follows through in England, or used to. I rode the LNER (London and Northeast Railway) from Colchester to London and back during WWII.
And a friend of mine told me that the Santa Fe when it was still known as ATSF(Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe) no longer went though any of those places.
Railroad fans are nuts. I once saw a couple of guys at the top of Cajon Pass in a driving rain taking movies of a UP freight train coming up the grade. They were out in the rain and protecting the camera with a plastic trash bag held over it.
.
Picking nits further, the Golden Spike was actually driven at Promontory Summit, although many reference sources say otherwise. From the National Park Service Last Spike Site brochure:
In 1904, the Southern (formerly Central) Pacific rerouted the line via a causeway across the Great Salt Lake, as mentioned by El_Kabong. The new line did and does cross Promontory Point, but the original one didn’t.
After the main line was rerouted, the original transcon track through Promontory Summit became a minor spur line, and was then abandoned, and was finally torn up for scrap during World War II. Today a few yards have been restored for reenactment purposes at Golden Spike National Historic Site, and you can drive and hike along several miles of the otherwise abandoned original roadbed.