-=> Quoting Lance Hillhouse to Kevin Fletcher <=-
 KF>this confuses me. i would think that transcontinental would mean
 KF>across the complete continent. isn't nebraska in the american
 KF>mid west? if so, wouldn't that make it only a semi continental
 KF>railway?
 KF>canadian pacific built from montreal to port moody and that spanned
 KF>spanned the continent.
 LH> In the 1850=s, the railroads (plural) terminated in Missouri and
 LH> Nebraska.  Further west was Indian Territory.  It was very sparsley
 LH> populated and very people knew the way across.  Those that did usually
 LH> guided wagon trains to Oregon and California.  These same guides hired
 LH> on to guide the UP west.
        I believe you will find that the railroads at that time did
not reach as far as Nebraska.  The Missouri River had not been bridged,
so they terminated on the Iowa side, at Council Bluffs, on the eastern
shore of the Missouri Rivier.
        For the first several years after the "transcontinental"
railroad was completed, passengers and freight had to be transferred
by boat across the Missouri River between Council Bluffs and Omaha.
        This probably also accounts for the reason that mileposts
on the Union Pacific between Omaha (MP 0.0) and Council Bluffs are
negative, with a minus sign in front of them.
        The term "transcontinental," of course, refers to the railroads
that completed a through route from coast to coast, except for the
water transfer at Council Bluffs-Omaha.  Since that time, the term
transcontinental has customarily been applied to western railroads
that connected the West Coast with the middle and eastern part of
the country.
        The same usage occurs in other fields.  An article in the
Bell System Technical Journal many years ago about "Building the
Fourth Transcontinental" telephone line was actually about
building a line from Oklahoma City west to the Pacific Coast, the
fourth long distance route to the West Coast (this was in the late
1920s or the 1930s).  The article explained that the long distance
network was already adequate and satisfactory from Oklahoma City
east, and so it was only necessary to build from there west.
        (Naturally, since I lived in Oklahoma City, as soon as I
read this I had to go out to where the article said the aerial
section of the line started at a repeater station on the south
side of the city.  It was indeed there, and the lines looked just
as the article said they would.)
        "Indian Territory" as a name never had a formal
designation as such, but Indian Territory was generally used
for the part of Oklahoma to which Indian tribes were removed,
forcibly if necessary, after the 1820s or 1830s.  The usage
was so general (and so limited to that area) that post offices
were designated "Indian Territory" (I.T.) even though there
was no legal name of "Indian Territory".
        The land west of the Missouri River was not generally
called "Indian Territory," as such, although most of the
inhabitants at that time were Indians.
 LH> In addition to the workmen, the government troops of
 LH> cavalry to protect the workers and the railroad itself.
 LH> The indians called the steam locomotives the "Iron Horse". 
 LH> They feared (correctly) the Iron Horse would help end
 LH> their way of life.
        Is there any basis for asserting that "Iron Horse" was
a term devised by Indians?  Similar terminology including "iron"
occurs in many languages, including "Chemin de Fer" (Iron Road)
as the name for a railroad in French, and "Ferrocarril" (same
meaning) in Spanish.  Surely the usage "Iron Horse" was in use
well before the railroads began encroaching on the Indians'
lands.
 LH> I suppose a more correct term would be "completed the first
 LH> intercontinental railroad".
        "Intercontinental" usually means "between continents,"
as in "Intercontinental Ballistic Missile" (ICBM).  "Trans-
continental" means across a continent, and would appear more
appropriate.
 LH> As to whether one railroad is transcontinental, I don't
 LH> know. UP probably is and BNSF probably is but back east
 LH> with trackage rights you never are sure if it is owned
 LH> or trackage rights.
 
        BNSF reaches as far east as Birmingham, Alabama,
but not to the Atlantic Coast.  UP goes as far east as Chicago,
Memphis and New Orleans, none of them on the Atlantic Coast,
and all of them also served by BNSF.
 KF>does the u.s. have a single transcontinental (east coast to
 KF>west coast) railway? by that i mean owned by one company?
        You are correct that only CP and CN are or were truly
transcontinental in the usual meaning of the word.
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