Chris , do train tours of the transcontinental railroad route exist ?
Answer Denny: Thanks for your question. Just so we are sure to be discussing the same thing, the first transcontinental railroad (TCRR) refers to the route completed in 1869 between Omaha, NE and Sacramento, CA and operated at that time by the Central Pacific Railroad. The famous “Golden spike” was driven in Promontory, UT on May 10 1869. Here is a link to a map of that routing: http://www.cprr.org/Museum/Maps/_cprr_map.html It does appear that much of the present day Amtrak routing between Elko and Reno Nevada does follow this original alignment. From about Elko and east, the current Amtrak routing runs south of the Salt Lake and remains south of the first TCRR routing until near Omaha, while the original TCRR ran North of Salt Lake and ran North of Amtrak’s present routing almost all the way to Omaha. Today, the Union Pacific Railroad which is a descendant of the Central Pacific Railroad runs freight service over quite a bit of the TCRR route west of Omaha and east of Salt Lake City,
