The Transcontinental Railroad was one of the greatest accomplishments that early America saw, connecting the West to the East. The impact and importance of the railroad on people is obvious when you hear often times that the life is related to the railroad, tracks, trains, and train stations. We have scoured our sources for the top 100 train quotes. Although the commonly, train and rail jokes are what people seek, we still covered the basis of quotes about railroad tracks and life, quotes about the Transcontinental, quotes on railway tracks and life and the ever popular “Life is like a train…” quotes.
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Quotes about Railroad Tracks and Life
- Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it’s kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for. –Rick Warren
- Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going. –Laurence J. Peter
- “RAILROAD, the chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get away from where we are to where we are no better off, for this purpose the railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits him to make the transit with great expedition.” – Ambrose Bierce
- I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of; for this moment I know where I am going.” – Anna Funder
- I went West and took part in the strike of the machinists – the Southern Pacific Railroad, the corporation that swung California by its golden tail, that controlled its legislature, its farmers,
its preachers, its workers. – Mary Harris Jones - “Never before in our history as a nation has occurred an event in the celebration of which all could participate so heartily, and with so little of mental reservation.” – Reported by San Francisco News Letters about the joining of the railroads
- Life is like a journey, taken on a train
With a pair of travelers at each windowpane.
I may sit beside you all the journey through,
Or I may sit elsewhere, never knowing you.
But if fate should make me sit by your side,
Let’s be pleasant travelers; it’s so short a ride. – Anonymous - When we are going too fast or go thru a red light we cause a derailment. However, in real life a derailment can cause a huge mess and can even kill people. This train of life when it derails God sends out the crane to put us back on track. This crane is like Jesus and His grace, and because of His grace He picks us up and places us on the tracks. – Joshua Robinson
- “Consider your mind being like the platform of a train station where different trains of thought pull through the station in each moment, heading to various destinations; childhood memories, creative ideas, revenge fantasies, cravings for chocolate, vacation plans. The untrained mind gets on every single train that pulls through the station, only later realizing what the destination is.” – Anushka Fernandopulle
- My grandpa once told me that this following analogy. Life is like a train. There are many stops along the journey. Places you can get off, get refreshed, meet new people…but when the whistle blows it’s time to jump back on that train to see what the next station stop has to offer. Sometimes the train gets derailed or makes a wrong switch turn…it’s a dirty job, but you can get that train back on course. Don’t be discouraged for these side trips are just part of the journey! – sarahontheroad.com
Quotes about the Transcontinental Railroad
- For an economy built to last we must invest in what will fuel us for generations to come. This is our history – from the Transcontinental Railroad to the Hoover Dam, to the dredging of our ports and building of our most historic bridges – our American ancestors prioritized growth and investment in our nation’s infrastructure. – Cory Booker
- While no one railroad can completely duplicate another line, two or more may compete at particular points. – John Moody
- The history of the Erie Railroad ever since 1901 has been a record of progress. – John Moody
- Consequently many large railroad systems of heavy capitalization bid fair to run into difficulties on the first serious falling off in general business. – John Moody
- The close relationship between railroad expansion and the general development and prosperity of the country is nowhere brought more distinctly into relief than in connection with the construction of the Pacific railroads. – John Moody
- The public conviction that a railroad linking the West and the East was an absolute necessity became so pronounced after the gold discoveries of ’49 that Congress passed an act in 1853 providing for a survey of several lines from the Mississippi to the Pacific. – John Moody
- Many of the railroad evils were inherent in the situation; they were explained by the fact that both managers and public were dealing with a new agency whose laws they did not completely understand. – John Moody
- We who have lived before railways were made belong to another world. It was only yesterday, but what a gulf between now and then! Then was the old world, stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, pack-horses, highwaymen, knights in armor, Norman invaders, Roman legions, Druids, Ancient Britons painted blue, and so forth — all these belong to the old period. But your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one. We who lived before railways, and survive out of the ancient world, are like Father Noah and his family out of the Ark. – William M. Thackeray
- Yet, in 1850 nearly all the railroads in the United States lay east of the Mississippi River, and all of them, even when they were physically mere extensions of one another, were separately owned and separately managed. – John Moody
- “The Pacific Railroad will be of great advantage to California and all agricultural regions on the Pacific. Many emigrants will go out there who now settle in Illinois, Iowa, Kansas and the other States.” – The Charleston Daily News, May18, 1869
- “Then the two last rails were laid, opposite each other. Wires were so arranged that the City Hall bell at San Francisco was struck at every stroke of the hammer, and the last stroke discharged a cannon connected at San Francisco in electrical circuit. The lines east were also placed in connection, to report every stroke at Omaha, Chicago, New York and Boston.”
- “About 12 o’clock the work of driving the last spike commenced, amid the deafening shouts of the multitude. In less than two minutes the great continental highway from ocean to ocean was an accomplished fact.” – The Highland Weekly News, May 20, 1869
- “The bell of Independence Hall was brought into use to commemorate the completion of the old Continental Railroad, and the scene there, generally, was more enthusiastic than any since Lee’s surrender.” – The Highland Weekly News, (Philadelphia) May 20, 1869
- “The fire-alarm bells in this city were struck at six minutes to 2 o’clock this afternoon, in responses to the blows of the hammer which drove the last spike in the Union Pacific Railroad. Quite a crowd assembled at the telegraph office, and must interest was manifest on the occasion. Everybody is rejoiced at the completion of the grandest enterprise ever accomplished by mortal hands!” – The Highland Weekly News, (St. Louis) May 20, 1869
- “After exchanging congratulations, while the laborers of the Union Pacific and the Chinamen of the Central were employed in arranging the tracks for the last rail, and before proceeding with this ceremony, the Rev. Dr. Todd offered up a prayer, asking the favor of Heaven upon the enterprise.” – The Highland Weekly News, May 20, 1869
- The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad. – John Moody
- “I would advise everybody that wants to take a pleasure trip to come here. – Take a ride over the Pacific Railroad – see the boundless prairies it traverses, and the dizzy heights it climbs – look up at the peaks of the snow clad mountains, crawl along their rocky sides and look down into their awful gorges, and then go to the verge and look off on the waste of waters and see where the sun sets, and you cannot help but go home with broader ideas of our great country, her resources and her future. Old fogies at home hardly believe in the Pacific Railroad yet, and those who do, think it a great risk of life to pass over it.” – Belmont Chronicle, December 16, 1869
- “The Union Pacific Railroad closed the gap of half a mile in their track, leaving but the space to be filled by the last rail. At 9 a.m. the first passenger train of the Union Pacific railroad arrived at the point, coming within a rail’s length of the Central Pacific track.” – The Weekly Arizonian, June 5, 1869
- ” … The … crews worked round the clock … Then, at one in the morning on May 3, 1867, a great, noisy crumbling took place at the east facing, and light from torches in the west could be seen flickering through the dust. … The Summit had been pierced. The Sierras had been bested. … Young Lewis Clement, the engineer in charge of Summit Tunnel, strode into the now widened bore a week after the breakthrough, surveyor’s instruments in hand. With torchbearers stationed every few yards in the 1,659-foot bore, Clement began his first series of observations in the damp and eerie tunnel. During the preceding two years’ work he and his assistants had been measuring under conditions never taught about in engineering schools. They had made their calculations under poor visibility on a wildly uneven tunnel floor, plotting a bore not only divided into four distinct parts, but one that had to gradually rise, descend, and curve as it penetrated from west to east. … the expected margin of error was large, and if the various bores were seriously misaligned, many months of expensive remedial work would have to be done, delaying the Central Pacific Railroad’s progress east. … As Clement finished his measurements and worked out the geometric statistics at a rude desk near the tunnel mouth, he found his most fervent prayers answered. Summit Tunnel’s four bores fitted together almost perfectly, with a total error in true line of less than two inches. The seemingly impossible had been achieved. The longest tunnel anyone had cut through natural granite, cut at a daunting altitude in an abominable climate, had been bored by a small army of Chinese thousands of miles from their ancestral home. The Sierras were truly breached and … the great race across the continent was on. … ” – John Hoyt Williams
- A transcontinental railroad, Lincoln hoped, would bring the entire nation closer together – would make Americans across the continent feel like one people. – United the States of America
- “Building the transcontinental railroad is widely considered one of the greatest achievements of the 19th Linking the east to the west opened the door to the pioneers who transformed our nation. It helped change the culture of our country to make Americans across the continent feel like one people. Today, Union Pacific continues to connect and support America’s families and businesses.” – Bob Turner, Union Pacific SVP
- “The one moral, the one remedy for every evil, social, political, financial, and industrial, the one immediate vital need of the entire Republic, is the Pacific Railroad.” – Rocky Mountain News 1866
- “The road must be built, and you are the man to do it. Take hold of it yourself. By building the Union Pacific, you will be the remembered man of your generation.” – President Abraham Lincoln to Oakes Ames, 1865
- “The people of this city and Sacramento are in a state of feverish excitement in regard to the completion of the Pacific Railroad. Preparations have been made in both places for the observance of the event, which will occur on Saturday.” –The Evening Telegraph in Philadelphia May 7, 1869
- Arrangements have been made by the Western Union Telegraph Company so that each stroke of the hammer on the last spike driven shall be repeated simultaneously in New York and San Francisco by telegraph. Besides the silver-mounted and polished California tie, a spike of gold, silver pick, and silver hammer, for use in the completion, were forwarded to the end of the track.” –The Evening Telegraph in Philadelphia May 7, 1869
- The completion of the Pacific railroad was celebrated to-day in Chicago, Buffalo, Cleveland and Cincinnati with great enthusiasm. The celebration seems to have been generally impromptu affairs, and is only seconded by the joy which greeted the close of the war. The great event is celebrated throughout the West to-night by fire-works, Illuminations, torchlight processions and speeches.” – The National Republican, May 1869
- One hundred guns were fired in the City Hall Park on the announcement of the completion of the Pacific railroad. – The National Republican, May 1869
- The last rail is laid, the last spike driven. The Pacific railroad is completed. The point of junction 1,086 miles west of the Missouri river and 690 miles east of San Francisco.- The National Republican, may 1869
- “The National Pacific Railroad is completed. Simultaneously with the last clink of the hammer upon the last spike yesterday, the electric wires transmitted the sound to every part of the country. By previous arrangement, the principal telegraph lines were kept free for the time, and the single message announcing the completion of the great work was flashed in a moment to all the chief cities of the Union” – The Sun, May 11, 1869
- “Saturday last was understood to be the day on which the last spike was to be driven in laying the Union Pacific railroad, and the telegraph announced the fast as accomplished; but afterwards retraced and stated that it wasn’t There was a hitch in the business which we leave the telegraph to explain for itself, not doubting that it can do it.” – Nashville Union and American May 12, 1869
- There was a smack of theatrical effect in the announcement that the Pacific Railroad would be completed by driving a spike of gold into a sleeper of laurel, each blow of the sledge being simultaneously recorded in the telegraph offices of New York and San Francisco; but there is an excuse for flourish and display, and it will be hard for the most bombastic speaker to exaggerate the importance of the iron band which connects the Atlantic and the Pacific and as it is the noblest work which Western civilization has successfully accomplished, must hold the first place in the material achievements of the century. – The Charleston Daily News, May 12, 1860
- All that we need remember is that the Pacific Railroad is completed, that eleven hundred miles of road are added to our gigantic railway system, and that the locomotive which pants in the streets of the cities of the East, is never silent until it reaches the shores of the Golden State.” – The Charleston Daily News, May 12, 1860
- The Pacific Railroad will populate and develop the territory lying between the great river and the great sea—a territory vast in area and rich in every element of greatness.” – The Charleston Daily News, May 12, 1860
- “…and the time must and will come when not one Pacific Railroad but many will traverse the continent, and bring the wealth of Asia and the whole United States, west of the great river, to the seaports of the East. Frist will come the Southern Pacific Railroad, which will build up Charleston and Norfolk and Savannah into metropolitan cities, and others will follow in its train until every demand of commerce shall be satisfied, and its every want fulfilled.” – The Charleston Daily News, May 12, 1860
- “As early as 1836, the project of a railroad across the Continent was suggested by Carver, Carke, Venton, Wilkes, Whitney, and John Plumb, an engineer of Dubuque, Iowa, the latter making it a specialty, and laboring earnestly though ineffectually to bring it to the favorable consideration of Congress, until his death after the California gold discovery” – The Montana Post May 14, 1869
- “The consummation of the great engineering work which now spans our continent, suggests a glance backward to review the progress of the age. Any man who had predicted fifty years ago that by science, and the practical application of it, the Atlantic would be brought nearer in this year to the Pacific than New York then was to Boston, would have exposed himself to strong doubts of his sanity. Yet this seeming maniacal fancy has been realized.” – The Charleston Daily, May 18, 1869
Life is Like a Train… Quotes
- Life is like a mountain railway
With an engineer that’s brave
We must make the run successful
From the cradle to the grave
Heed the curves and watch the tunnels
Never falter, never fail
Keep your hands upon the throttle
And your eye upon the rail – Linda Ronstadt - Life is like a train ride, some will get on and get off the train so quickly, they will scarcely leave a sign that they ever traveled along with you or ever crossed your path… -Sompong Yusoontorn
- Life is a train ride, and at the many stations along the route, people important to us debark, never to get aboard again, until by the end of the journey, we sit in a passenger car where most of the seats are empty. – Dean Koontz
- “Life is like a train… There will also be the chance that the train derails. If that does happen, it will hurt, a lot, for a long time. But there will be people who will appear out of nowhere who will get you back on track. Those will be the people that will matter most in your life.” – John A. Passaro
- “Life is like an old time rail journey…delays…sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling burst of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.” – Jenkin Lloyd Jones
Hope you enjoyed some of the inspirational and motivational quotes relating to trains. You might also want to enjoy reading through out best train jokes next!
