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The American-Track

The year was 1870, not long after the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad, and a radical and forward-thinking idea emerged in Washington.

While the transcontinental railroad had slashed travel time considerably, the new American passenger still had to deal with the headache of many competing railroads and schedules on their way to the western territories. There had to be a better way for the railroad passenger to travel across a rapidly expanding network in a rapidly expanding country.

The solution was put forth by a forward-thinking Prof. Albert Wickwire late that year: a National Passenger Railway Company, to be operated by the federal government as a peacetime extension of the U.S. Military Railroads, that had been so instrumental to victory in the War Between the States.

Aboard the so-called American-Track, a traveler could alight in New York and travel as far as Sacramento on a single ticket. Cheaper ticket prices would attract more passengers and promote further settlement of the territories.
On the opposite end of the social spectrum, the American-Track could also be arranged to serve foreign diplomats and luminaries visiting the United States.
Trains owned and operated by the federal government would not be new; since 1869, a Secret Service program had been stationing agents aboard special trains, which could be dispatched for intelligence operations anywhere in the country at a moment’s notice. (One such agent, a Mr. Artemus Gordon, was a strong proponent of the American-Track and contributed much to its development.)

Sure enough, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the National Railway Passenger Service Act into law in October 1870. Under the direction of the brilliant engineer and explorer Frank Reade, no expense was spared in outfitting a prototype train, from the powerful and advanced engine to the ornately furnished, Pullman-built Superior Liner that brought up the rear.

It was with much fanfare that, on May 1, 1871, the first American-Track departed New York City for Washington, D.C., where it arrived in the midst of a special ceremony to be greeted by no less than President Grant himself.

But in the long term, the dream was not to be. Of course the railroad tycoons opposed the “Federals” cutting in on their profits, and accused the National Passenger Rail Road Co. of slow schedules, dingy accommodations, and employment of Irishmen. Sadly, in this modern era of newspaper and telegraph, the American-Track and its promoters found it hard to outrun a good old-fashioned media smear campaign.

With only a handful of equipment and a dwindling supply of cash, the National Passenger Rail Road Co. dissolved a few years later. Plans for an even more advanced train, the “electrical-fired” Acceleratrix that would connect Boston to Washington at sustained speeds of up to sixty miles per hour, never left the drawing board.
Nonetheless, the American-Track was a fascinating experiment while it lasted, a century ahead of its time, and now commemorated at long last.