History Of The Burlington Northern

Cyrus K. Holliday envisioned a railroad that would run from Kansas to the Pacific, increasing the commerce and prosperity of the nation. With farsighted investors and shrewd management, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway grew from Holliday's idea into a model of the modern, rapid, and efficient railroad. There were many growing pains early on, including rustlers, thieves, and desperadoes as well as the nineteenth century's economic and climatic hardships. The railroad eventually extended from Chicago to San Francisco, with substantial holdings in oil fields, timber land, uranium mines, pipelines, and real estate. This is the first comprehensive history of the iconic Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, from its birth in 1859 to its termination in 1996. This volume discusses the construction and operation of the railway, the strategies of its leaders, the evolution of its locomotive fleet, and its famed passenger service with partner Fred Harvey. The vast changes within the nation's railway system led to a merger with the Burlington Northern and the creation of the BNSF Railway. An iconic railroad, the Santa Fe at its peak operated thirteen thousand miles of routes and served the southwestern region of the nation with the corporate slogan "Santa Fe All the Way." This new edition covers almost twenty-five more years of history, including the merger of the Santa Fe and Burlington Northern railroads and new material on labor, minorities, and women on the carrier along with new and updated maps and photographs.

Burlington Northern (BN) formed from the merger of four railways. Success required complex planning and implementation programs. Then the electric-power industry summoned BN to transport immense amounts of low-sulfur coal, and railroading as an adventure began for thousands hired to improve or increase the railroad's capacity, lines, tracks, and fleet size. Soon, BN's lines handled the highest tonnages of any railroad line in the world, past or present. This, the first in a two-volume series, covers this important decade.

Alliance has been a railroad center ever since the Burlington Railroad established the city in 1888 while pushing tracks into the vast, open regions of Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana. As a hub for trains carrying a variety of agricultural and mining products to market, Alliance became headquarters in 1902 for the large and geographically diverse area of Burlington train operations called the Alliance Division. For 86 years, the Alliance Division controlled much of the region's rail traffic. Despite the loss of its division point status in 1988, Alliance continues to have its fortunes closely tied to the railroad, now known as the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe. Today, the BNSF funnels large numbers of coal trains through the city while transporting Power River Basin coal to power plants across the nation.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Heritage started in 1849 with the opening of the Aurora Branch Railroad in Illinois from Aurora to Chicago's west side. This grew into the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, which in a 1970 merger with several railroads became the Burlington Northern Railroad. A 1995 merger of the Burlington Northern Railroad with the Santa Fe Railway created the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railway, the largest railroad in North America at that time. This book carefully covers the heritage of this very successful railroad.

During the 1980s, three major events--a Frisco Railroad merger, leadership changes, and deregulation--improved Burlington Northern's railway earnings and radically transformed corporate objectives, standards, work methods, and technology. This volume explores initiatives and strategies Burlington Northern employed to reach the era's ambitious goals, as well as the cost of such profound change.