Were there ever any regularly-scheduled passenger trains in the USA which traversed the entire country - i.e. from Atlantic to Pacific? It seems you always had to change in Chicago (and still do).
How about further south? Atlanta or anywhere in Florida to California without changing trains?
I think the Sunset Limited ran from either Miami or Orlando to Los Angeles. Since Hurricane Katrina, it runs from New Orleans to Los Angeles.
Let’s limit this to pre-Amtrak days. The “Sunset Limited” was a Southern Pacific train which ran from New Orleans to San Francisco (via Los Angeles). So no transcontinental service there.
There has never been true coast-to-coast service by any railroad in the United States in the pre-Amtrak era, largely because of how the railroad system(s) and interoperation developed. George Gould tried to establish a transcontinental line through Manhattan Railway Company (MRC), Denver and Rio Grande Western (DRGW), and Western Pacific (WP) railroads in which he either oversaw or had controlling interests in, and intended to run a line from Philadelphia to San Francisco, but the Bankers’ Panic of 1907 forestalled that effort. The general history of railroad development is a pretty ugly one and should serve as a cautionary tale for anyone who believes that we can shift all OTR haulage to rail transport, notwithstanding the entrenched bureaucracies and union issues that would have to be overcome.
Christian Wolmar’s The Great Railroad Revolution and Michael Hiltzik’s Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads, and the Making of Modern America give a good overview of railroad developments although if you really want to get into depth of how ugly that competition was you have to dive into research in legal and financial history. I haven’t yet read it but Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad covers the experience of Cantonese workers who were brought over to build the Central Pacific Railroad railroad under brutal and dangerous working conditions, and then heavily discriminated against and mostly deported.
Stranger
Just to build on this: even the largest U.S. railroad companies were (and still are) regional, from the standpoint of not having nationwide operations. In particular, a lot of the biggest railroads tended to operate in quadrants of the country (northwest, southwest, northeast, southeast); Chicago was often the westernmost (or easternmost) terminus of those lines, which is why it was (and is) often the place where one would have to change trains (and, prior to Amtrak, change railroads) as part of a cross-country trip.
I was going to dispute with the argument that BNSF is (through various acquisitions) a true national railway system but looking at a map of lines you are correct; both BNSF and Union Pacific are West-to-Midwest, and CSX and Norfolk Southern are almost all east of the Mississippi over to the Atlantic Seaboard and down to the South. (I did have a laugh on an episode of Justified when they were hobo’ing out on a railcar with the engine clearly painted in Union Pac livery and was clearly on the outskirts of Castaic somehow standing in for southern Kentucky.) Of course, no railroad is running long distance passenger service anymore except for Amtrak, and that is so expensive that it is usually just cheaper to fly even if you don’t care about getting literally sidetracked for hours at a time.
Stranger
There were never any transcontinental trains, but there was transcontinental service with individual sleeper cars. You stayed in the same car and the railroads switched the cars between trains (and stations). In 1946, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe started offering transcontinental service by including three run-through sleepers on The Chief. These cars would travel from Los Angeles to Chicago on The Chief, where they would be swapped for run-through sleepers that had arrived on the New York Central’s 20th Century Limited, the Baltimore & Ohio’s Capitol Limited, and the Pennsylvania RR’s Broadway Limited. After their trip east, the cars would return to Chicago on their respective trains, where they would again be swapped with three sleepers from The Chief for the rest of the journey westward. There was also New York to San Francisco service via a complicated New York Central - Chicago Northwestern - Union Pacific - Southern Pacific arrangement. All long gone, of course.
Even Amtrak used to have a Trans-Con sleeper between LA and NYC using the Sunset Limited and Crescent. There was also a Trans-Con sleeper LA to/from NYC using the National Limited and Super Chief (later the Southwest Chief.)
Chicago in the old days - you didn’t just change trains, but often stations as well. And when you got to “New York City” - it was often New Jersey, and you needed to take a ferry to complete your journey - ten railroads had terminals there (did the Pennsylvania RR allow any other railroads to use their Hudson River tunnel?).
According to a one Youtuber I follow, the name Union Station used to refer to a station used by more than one railroad company, which is why there are so many train stations with that name around the US. It sounds plausible, but I have no idea if he’s actually right.
It would have been cheaper for railroads to share facilities, that’s why there are so many “Union” stations. Chicago had six stations - most servicing a major railroad and several minor ones. Its Union Station serviced several major railroads, and remains as Amtrak’s Chicago station. Chicago Railroad Stations (chicagology.com)
From the California Zephyr’s inauguration in 1949 until October 1957 the Pennsylvania Railroad ran one 10-6 sleeper, Silver Rapids, on the Broadway Limited between New York and Chicago where it would be attached to the CZ for the rest of the way to Emeryville. Thus one could travel from coast to coast without changing cars – but on different trains, different railroads – once a week.
Can we count Emeryville as being on the “west coast”? It’s close (near Oakland), but the ideal destination would be San Francisco. Did/does SF have a “downtown” rail station (not commuter)?
Close enough, if you could get to Emeryville you can at least smell brackish water… By land, San Francisco has never had freight rail service any closer than San Jose and there is basically no reason or throughway to run anything but commuter rail up the west side of the Bay. Even establishing Caltrain to take over commuter service from Southern Pacific and getting right-of-way through to Daly City was essentially an act of many gods.
Stranger
The Master speaks, confirming your friend’s statement (and discussing the tangled web of Chicago train stations to boot.)
with Amtrak, they provide bus service to and from SF from Emeryville
On the contrary, San Francisco had and has freight service up the peninsula since 1863 and rail ferry service from 1862 until 1958. Santa Fe and Western Pacific ran passenger ferries across the bay until the 1930s to connect with their inter-city service but they carried people, not cars.
I stand corrected.
Stranger