A transcontinental railroad is a contiguous network of railroad trackage that crosses a continental land mass with terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks can be via the tracks of either a single railroad, or over those owned or controlled by multiple railway companies along a continuous route. Although Europe is crisscrossed by railways, the railroads within Europe are usually not considered transcontinental, with the possible exception of the historic Orient Express.
Transcontinental railroads helped open up unpopulated interior regions of continents to exploration and settlement that would not otherwise have been feasible. In many cases they also formed the backbones of cross-country passenger and freight transportation networks.
In the United States of America, transcontinental railroads created a nation-wide transportation network that united the country. This network replaced the wagon trains of previous decades and allowed for the transportation of larger quantities of goods over longer distances. Construction by the Central Pacific Railroad and Union Pacific Railroad of the 1,928 mile "Pacific Railroad" link between Council Bluff,IA/Omaha, NE and the San Francisco Bay at Oakland, CA via Ogden, UT and Sacramento, CA connecting with the existing railroad network to the East Coast creating the world's first transcontinental railroad when it opened in 1869 was made possible by the Congress through the passage of Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862, 1864 and 1867.
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“Though the railroad and the telegraph have been established on the shores of Maine, the Indian still looks out from her interior mountains over all these to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)