Coast To Coast Travel Time

What was the average crossing time from coast to coast in the United States by train in the late 19th century?

At first, the trains weren’t as reliable as they eventually became. Chicago evolved into the nation’s switching point — not only for passenger trains going East to West, but also the major loading and disembarking point for goods and livestock going shorter distances North and South. The stockyards there was indeed the “hog butcher to the world”.

But smaller cities along the route, might have died a natural death or never been founded in the first place if not for becoming the natural points where people got off and on after possibly making a two-day buggy ride to the secondary spot: Kansas City, Omaha, Denver, Cheyenne, Minneapolis, Grand Island, etc.

By the turn of the century, 19th into the 20th that is, it was a three-to-four-day ride across the nation with an obligatory stop in either Chicago or St. Louis. The two cities were in active competition up until the end of World War II: Hence the 1893 Columbian Exposition, the first Chicago World’s Fair and the 1904 Centennial of the Louisiana Purchase better known as the St. Louis World’s Fair, the most highly attended of them all.

Today, the railroad bridges East of those points only allow standard single-level passenger cars to come into Chicago. Westbound from Chicago allow one to take the double decker cars with the modern observation level on top, or freight moved by double decker’s because the bridges built out in the Western part of the continent were constructed later and therefore higher.