I couldn’t let the first annual National Train Day pass without comment.

May 10 was chosen as the National Train Day in commemoration of the day the last rail and the last spike — an engraved golden spike now residing in the museum — joined the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads in Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869.

I love me some trains, and in this day and age when air travel costs far more than the ticket price in discomfort, humiliation and delays, and car travel gets increasingly more prohibitive as the price of a full tank skyrockets, it’s good to see Amtrak actually wake the hell up and get some PR steam.

For some fantastic period pictures and scans of news articles published on the day, check out the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum.