America’s first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, born of the Pacific Railway Act that President Abraham Lincoln signed into law seven years earlier. It was meant to knit the country together, coast to coast, on steel rails. So why, more than 150 years later, can’t a shipper move a single load from one ocean to the other without changing railroads partway across the country?

Somewhere in the middle, the train is forced to stop. The freight gets handed off to another carrier, crews change, paperwork piles up, and the customer absorbs longer wait times and higher costs. A century and a half after the golden spike, America still moves freight with a seam running down its middle.