The first railroad beyond the Missouri River was built in 1859 by investors in St. Joseph who saw their city as the gateway to the West. After laying six miles of track on the Kansas side of the river, the enterprise stalled as the Civil War approached. In 1862, President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act calling for a transcontinental railroad to California. When the war ended, three railroads stood on the shore of the Missouri River, and the race west began to determine which would become the transcontinental railroad. Kansas City took the lead by building the first bridge over the Missouri, and the Kansas Pacific steamed west, but Omaha's Union Pacific won and became the official transcontinental line. St. Joseph could not raise the funds to bridge the river, and its California dream died. Its six miles of track became the St. Joseph and Grand Island, which passed through Seneca in 1870 and connected to the transcontinental line in Nebraska. The Kansas City and North Western arrived in Seneca in 1887. By then railroads were crisscrossing Kansas, but the Panic of 1893 brought railroad bankruptcies as automobiles and trucks began making further inroads into rail service. The Kansas City and North Western stopped running in 1919, and the Union Pacific took control of the St. Joseph and Grand Island. The frequent multi-car passenger trains that had served Seneca were reduced to two-car motors twice a day. That service ended in 1954, and the Seneca depot was torn down. Today the Union Pacific runs more trains over this line than had ever been imagined in 1859, with mile-long diesel-powered trains carrying empties to the Powder River coalfields in Wyoming to be refilled and returned to supply electric plants throughout the central states.