Union Pacific’s Making Lincoln’s 165-Year-Old Dream A Reality… If Regulators Don’t Kill it First

Everyone remembers Abraham Lincoln for the beard, the hat, the Gettysburg Address, and that whole saving the Union thing. But the man also had another massive vision… one that didn’t involve battlefield speeches or vampire hunting. He wanted a railroad. And not just any railroad. Lincoln dreamed of a single, uninterrupted, U.S.-operated line stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific… essentially shrink-wrapping the nation in steel.

At the time, traveling from New York to San Francisco meant playing Oregon Trail on nightmare mode. You could either drag a wagon across thousands of miles of rattlesnake-infested nothingness, risk malaria in the Panama jungle, or sail all the way around South America like some 1800s Christopher Columbus cosplay. Naturally, Lincoln’s answer was to lay down steel from sea to shining sea. A single line that connected East and West, unlocked trade routes, settled the frontier, and kept the country from falling apart at the seams. In his mind, infrastructure was how you build a nation. Now, 165 years later, that dream is finally (finally) coming true.

This morning, Union Pacific announced it’s acquiring Norfolk Southern in an $85 billion megadeal, forming the largest railroad company in the U.S. with 50,000+ miles of track and a historic new valuation north of $250 billion. To put that in perspective, Lincoln’s dream is now worth more than Disney and Netflix combined.

(Source: CNBC)

The deal gives Union Pacific one hell of a flex: coast-to-coast coverage, entirely on its own tracks. Meaning, for the first time ever, a single U.S. company can haul freight from the Pacific to the Atlantic without handing it off like a relay baton. That’s a big deal. For instance, it eliminates the need to coordinate with rival railroads… many of which would rather light their own locomotives on fire than play nice on scheduling or pricing. It also helps bypass the legendary freight vortex known as Chicago, where cargo routinely disappears into a maze of delays and missed connections. 

So instead of juggling partners and praying the system holds, Union Pacific gets full control… one seamless, uninterrupted route across the continent. That’s exactly what Honest Abe had in mind back in 1862 when he signed the Pacific Railway Act… while simultaneously trying to keep the country from ripping itself in half. (Meanwhile, today’s Congress can barely keep the lights on.) Union Pacific CEO Jim Vena clearly gets it. He even said the merger would “build on President Abraham Lincoln’s vision for a transcontinental railroad.”

And the numbers backing this thing are just as ambitious as the pitch. Norfolk Southern shareholders are cashing out at $320 per share (a 23% premium over the stock’s pre-deal price) which includes nearly $89 in straight-up cash. This means Union Pacific is paying top dollar to seal the deal, not just handing out stock and hoping everyone claps. The two companies also claim they’ll generate $2.7 billion in annual “synergies”... which, for the uninitiated, is corporate-speak for cutting overlapping costs and squeezing more profit out of the same tracks. (In other words: expect fewer jobs, more spreadsheets, and lots of execs using the word ‘efficiency’.)

If it gets approved, this won’t just be the biggest U.S. merger since Microsoft inhaled Activision back in 2022... it’ll be the most significant railroad tie-up since Lincoln said, “let’s connect this country before it completely falls apart.” But, of course, there’s a catch. Several, actually.

The Surface Transportation Board, the DOJ, labor unions, and basically everyone who remembers Norfolk Southern’s exploding train disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, are all likely to have some beef against the deal (and rightfully so). You know, the incident that turned an entire town’s drinking water into a glowing science experiment? Yeah, that Norfolk Southern.

And let’s not pretend the industry isn’t already tight-knit. The rail industry has already gone through wave after wave of consolidation. So yeah, there aren’t that many major players left. A merger like this one would eliminate key freight handoffs, give Union Pacific coast-to-coast pricing power, and basically put them in the driver’s seat of America’s supply chain. (If you thought airline fees were bad, just wait until your cereal costs extra because it crossed the Mississippi.)

Still, there’s one thing tipping the scales: Trump’s Surface Transportation Board is… let’s say, deal-friendly. Chairman Patrick Fuchs (appointed in January) has made it clear he’d rather “fix deals after the fact” than block them up front. For instance, instead of killing mergers over what might go wrong, he wants to approve them and deal with problems if and when they show up.

At the end of the day, this is a full-circle moment for American history. What started with Lincoln trying to unite a divided nation with a few miles of track has evolved into a rail empire spanning sea to shining sea. Sure, it took a few centuries, a couple of recessions, and one massive chemical disaster… but the steel vision lives on. Let’s just see if this deal can actually get approved.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Microsoft, Disney, and Netflix as mentioned in the article.