Burlington Northern Railroad

The Burlington Northern Railroad (BN ) was an American railroad company, headquartered in Saint Paul ( Minnesota). It was created in 1970 and existed until its merger with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in 1995. Your route network extended from the Gulf of Mexico across the Midwest and the northern Rocky Mountain states to the Pacific. She was the longest distance railroad in North America during the longest period of its existence.

Route network

The main line of the former BN begins in Chicago and results in a northwesterly direction over La Crosse (Wisconsin ) and Minneapolis -St. Paul to Grand Forks. From here it continues westward through the states of North Dakota, Montana and Idaho to Spokane (Washington), which is crossed in the Marias Pass Montana. In Spokane, the track divides into a branch to Portland ( Oregon) and one to Seattle and Vancouver. To the south, the route from Billings ( Montana) extends over Denver, Amarillo, Fort Worth / Dallas to Houston / Galveston. Other north-south routes lead from Chicago to Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Memphis (Tennessee ) and up to Birmingham ( Alabama) and Mobile. Add to that the west-east route Denver - Lincoln (Nebraska ) - Chicago.

History

The Burlington Northern was formed on March 2, 1970, through the merger of the Great Northern Railway, the Northern Pacific Railway, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad and the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway. This merger went back to the first attempts from the time of James J. Hill around 1901. Years before the merger, these companies shared the headquarters in St. Paul.

1980 bought the Burlington Northern St. Louis - San Francisco Railway. A year later, the parent company of Burlington Northern Inc. to Seattle and 1988 at the Texas Fort Worth. In 1981, the Colorado and Southern Railway was incorporated in 1983 and the Fort Worth and Denver Railway. In the following years, the company streamlined its network, in which they closed down inefficient or duplicate routes or sold. Among other things, the former Northern Pacific mainline between Huntley, Montana and Sandpoint, Idaho, was sold to Montana Rail Link. With the development of coal deposits in the Powder River Basin, the company became one of the most important Transport for coal. 1995 merged with the Burlington Northern Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe to Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and so was the, as measured by the distance in kilometers, the largest railway company in the United States.