The decade leading up to the year 1900 was one of frustration for Central Coast residents. They desperately wanted a rail connection to the outside world.

In spite of Southern Pacific's track gangs working both north from LA and south from San Francisco, progress ground to a halt in the final years of the decade due to economic downturns and distractions from other more pressing routes, like the Sunset and the Overland.

This break in the incomplete Coast Line came to be known as "The GAP."

During this period, many Central Coast cities pinned their hopes on the narrow-gauge Pacific Coast Railway. (These cities included Santa Maria, Solvang, Santa Ynez and Buellton.) With 76 miles of PCR track covering nearly three-fourths of the Gap's distance, both citizens and the Pacific Coast Railway hoped that Southern Pacific might buy them out and build the Coast Main Line over the narrow-gauge right of way.

Unfortunately for these cities (and the PCR), when Southern Pacific resumed its construction, it took the Coast Line due south along the beach from Pismo to Guadalupe, over Shuman Hill, around the seaside cliffs of Point Concepcion and straight eastward over a myriad of trestles and fills to Santa Barbara. By 1942, the Pacific Coast Railway was bankrupt.