 Beyond Toledo, the planned route would have used the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad (1900), Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, Little Kanawha Railroad, West Virginia Central and Pittsburgh Railway, Western Maryland Railroad, and Philadelphia and Western Railway, but the Panic of 1907 strangled the plans before the Little Kanawha section in West Virginia could be finished.The Alphabet Route was completed in 1931, providing the portion of this line east of the Mississippi River.With the merging of the railroads, only the Union Pacific Railroad and the BNSF Railway remain to carry the entire route.