Burlington Northern HO Scale Models

The Burlington Northern Railroad came into existence on March 2, 1970, the result of a long-pursued consolidation of four major western railroads: the Great Northern Railway, the Northern Pacific Railway, the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway, and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. The roots of these constituent carriers stretched back to the mid-nineteenth century, and their intertwined ownership history owed much to railroad magnate James J. Hill, who had built the Great Northern and later acquired a controlling interest in the Northern Pacific during that road's financial difficulties in 1896. In 1901, the two railways jointly purchased the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, securing a critical connection to Chicago as a gateway to the eastern rail network. An attempt to formally unify the railroads under the Northern Securities Company was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1904, and subsequent merger proposals in 1927 and 1955 also failed before regulatory approval was finally granted for the 1970 consolidation. John M. Budd of the Great Northern became the new company's first board chairman and chief executive officer, while Louis W. Menk of the Northern Pacific served as president and chief operating officer. The newly formed Burlington Northern operated an extensive network spanning from Chicago westward across the northern tier of the United States to the Pacific Coast, with main lines crossing the Continental Divide at Marias Pass on the former Great Northern alignment and at Mullan and Homestake Passes on the former Northern Pacific corridor. The railroad served Seattle and the Puget Sound region via the Cascade Tunnel on Stevens Pass, reached Portland through both the former Northern Pacific line via Stampede Tunnel and the former Spokane, Portland and Seattle route along the north bank of the Columbia River, and maintained connections into the Gulf Coast region of the south. One of the most consequential early developments was the construction in 1972 of a rail line into the Powder River Basin of Wyoming to access extensive coal deposits there. This traffic grew to extraordinary proportions, transforming Burlington Northern into one of the heaviest coal-hauling railroads in the country and driving dramatic increases in total freight tonnage throughout the 1970s. The railroad continued to expand its reach through acquisition during the early 1980s. In November 1980, Burlington Northern absorbed the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway, known informally as the Frisco, extending the system southward to the Gulf Coast and into Florida. The Colorado and Southern Railway was folded into the Burlington Northern in 1981, followed by the Fort Worth and Denver Railway in 1982. The company relocated its headquarters from Saint Paul, Minnesota to Seattle in 1981 and then again to Fort Worth, Texas in 1988. During this period, Burlington Northern also spun off its non-railroad holdings into a separate company called Burlington Resources in 1988. The former Northern Pacific main line through Montana was leased to the newly formed Montana Rail Link in 1987, an arrangement that reduced operating costs on a corridor that remained important to regional shippers. Burlington Northern ceased to exist as an independent entity on December 31, 1996, when its merger with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway was fully consummated, creating the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. That railroad subsequently shortened its name to BNSF Railway in January 2005, and its parent corporation was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway, the investment conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett, in 2009. The legacy of Burlington Northern endures through BNSF, which operates one of the largest freight railroad networks in North America and continues to rely heavily on the Powder River Basin coal traffic and northern transcontinental corridors that Burlington Northern developed and expanded during its twenty-six years of operation.