My son, Jeff, works for the railroad

Burlington Northern Railroad

Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) was created on March 2, 1970, by the merger of four primary railroads:
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co. (CB&Q);
Northern Pacific Railway Co. (NP);
Great Northern Railway Co. (GN);
Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway Co. (SP&S).

CB&Q:
Oldest, Largest of the
BN Predecessors

CB&Q operated the first printing telegraph in 1910, and in 1915 was the first railroad to use train radio. Later, in 1927, the CB&Q was one of the first to utilize centralized traffic control.  Perhaps CB&Q's best known achievement took place in 1934, when the railroad introduced the Pioneer Zephyr, America's first diesel-powered streamlined passenger train. On May 26, the CB&Q staged one of the greatest transportation events ever—a 1,000-mile record-breaking, non-stop run from Denver to the World's Fair in Chicago, reaching speeds of more than 100 miles per hour. The Zephyr was the forerunner of thousands of diesels which, after World War II, replaced steam  locomotives on virtually every railroad in the country.
(www.bnsf.com)

Northern Pacific:
First Northern
Transcontinental

Completion of the first of the northern transcontinentals was the signal for a lavish celebration at Gold Creek, Montana Territory, where tracks from the East and the West were joined on September 8, 1883. The ceremonial "last spike" was driven by former President Ulysses S. Grant and Henry Villard, president of the NP.
(www.bnsf.com)

Great Northern:

In 1896, Hill, who became known as the "Empire Builder" because of his ability to create prosperous businesses, negotiated an agreement with Nippon Yusen Kaisha, then the largest steamship line in the Pacific, resulting in the establishment of service between Seattle and Oriental ports. It was a bold challenge to the established commerce between Europe and the Orient, and marked the beginning of Seattle's ascendancy as a world port.  GN, through the years to the merger that created BN, continued to earn recognition as one of the preeminently progressive  railroads in the nation.
(www.bnsf.com)

Spokane, Portland & Seattle:
"The Northwest's Own Railway"

The SP&S was chartered in Washington state on August 23, 1905, and soon was controlled by NP and GN, each with 50-percent ownership.

Frisco:

The St. Louis-San Francisco Railway Company known as Frisco, was chartered in 1849 as the Pacific Railroad of Missouri. In 1876, the southwest branch of the Pacific was purchased by the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway. During World War II, Texas and Oklahoma oil was moved by the Frisco. BN acquired the Frisco in 1980
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Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe Railway

The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway name remained virtually intact since 1863. Santa Fe passenger service set the standard for luxury and attention to detail, with famed trains like the California Limited, the Super Chief, the El Capitan, the Valley Flyer and the Texas Chief. In association with this legendary passenger service, Fred Harvey established a chain of restaurants, hotels, lunch counters and dining rooms to feed and accommodate millions of travelers between 1876 and the 1950s. Santa Fe developed the first land-bridge container train, linking Asia with Europe using Santa Fe and Penn Central (Conrail) lines. In the mid-1970s, Santa Fe developed the first articulated intermodal railcar, featuring a skeleton design for lighter weight, a lower center of gravity and reduced fuel consumption. Santa Fe is credited with industry-wide improvements to other types of railcars as well, including the development of the Super Hopper and the articulated autoveyor.

In the late 1980s, Santa Fe developed improvements in locomotive cab design which later set the standard for the industry. About that same time, Santa Fe stunned the transportation industry with the announcement of its intermodal partnership with J.B. Hunt, the first such partnership between a railroad and a trucking firm. In 1993, a centralized Systems Operations Center in Schaumburg, Ill., became the world's largest fully distributed transportation management system.
(www.bnsf.com)