Re: Union Pacific Railroad name
Author: yeoldtrain
Date: 04-08-2018 - 23:36
That's an interesting question.
The Northern Pacific, Southern Pacific, and Central Pacific Railroads all make sense, these were three early big federally backed pacific railroads broadly following the routes identified in earlier government pacific railroad surveys. But "union" pacific?
In conventional railroad terminology a 'union' denotes ownership by multiple railroads, such as a "Union Station" or the "Union Loop" in Chicago
But more broadly, there's the sense of 'union' as in an entity *serving* multiple railroads, if not owned by multiple railroads. And in a sense the Union Pacific historically served this purpose, linking the Central Pacific Route with numerous railroads that connected to it at the hubs of Council Bluffs and Kansas City. That's where I suspect the name comes from.