But it was in 1869 that the Pullman car made perhaps its greatest advance in the interest and confidence of the public for in that year the Union Pacific, building westward from the Missouri River at Omaha, met the Central Pacific, which built from San Francisco eastward. By their union a line was established between the two coasts of the continent, a slender thread of track which stretched for 1,848 miles through a practically uninhabited country. Almost simultaneously with the completion of the road there was put upon the rails one of the most superb trains ever turned out of the Pullman shops. Its journey to California and its reception there were in the nature of a progressive ovation. From that time forth the great population of the Pacific coast knew no train for long distance travel save a Pullman train, and would hear of no other. When people from California reached Chicago on their way eastward, the road over which Pullman cars ran got their patronage, and roads over which other cars were operated did not. Newspapers and magazines were awakened to studies of the Pullman cars and the Pullman system, and scores of printed pages were filled with the marvels of a journey to the Pacific Ocean which was nothing more than a six days' sojourn in a luxurious hotel, past the windows of which there constantly flowed a great panorama of the American continent, thousands of miles in length and as wide as the eye could reach. Illustrated magazine articles which appeared telling the story of a trip to California had as many pictures of Pullman interiors as they had of the big trees or the Yosemite Valley. The effect of all this was far reaching. The great Pennsylvania line abandoned its own service and adopted the Pullman, and many other lines made application for inclusion in the Pullman system. In May, 1870, the first through train from the Atlantic to the Pacific crossed the continent, engaged for a special excursion by the Boston Board of Trade, many distinguished Bostonians being numbered among the passengers. During the trip a daily newspaper entitled the _Trans-Continental_ was published. In the issue of May 31, published on the sixth day out, as the train was crossing the summit of the Sierra Nevadas, an account is given of a meeting of the passengers in the smoking car, and resolutions passed by them were printed. The Hon. Alex H. Rice presided at the meeting, and the resolutions were offered by Frank H. Peabody, a Boston banker, and seconded by Robert B. Forbes, another Bostonian.