yeoldtrain Wrote:
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> 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.

When the Railroad Act was proposed, the northern route would be called the Northern Pacific, central route.. Central Pacific and the southern route called Southern Pacific