Great Northern Railway HO Scale Models

The Great Northern Railway of the United States stands as one of the most significant railroads in the history of North American transportation, incorporated in 1881 and built into a transcontinental system under the forceful direction of James Jerome Hill, whose ambition and business acumen earned him the nickname "the Empire Builder." Unlike many of its contemporaries, the Great Northern was constructed without federal land grants, relying instead on private financing and Hill's insistence on careful, economical construction that kept grades low and curves gentle wherever terrain permitted. The main line stretched from St. Paul, Minnesota westward through the northern tier of states, crossing Montana, Idaho, and Washington before reaching Puget Sound at Seattle, with the line completed to the Pacific coast in 1893. The railroad also operated the Cascade Tunnel beneath the Cascade Range in Washington, originally opened in 1900 and later replaced by a longer electrified bore completed in 1929 that remains the longest railroad tunnel in the Western Hemisphere. Hill used the Great Northern as the centerpiece of a broader railroad empire that also included effective control of the Northern Pacific Railway and, briefly through a holding company called Northern Securities, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. The Supreme Court dissolved Northern Securities in 1904 following antitrust action, but Hill maintained close operational coordination among his properties nonetheless. The Great Northern developed robust traffic in Pacific Northwest timber, Montana copper and coal, and transcontinental freight moving between the Midwest and Pacific ports. Its passenger services were legendary, particularly the Empire Builder, inaugurated as a named train in 1929, which became one of the most celebrated named trains in American railroading and carried the Great Northern's mountain goat logo as a symbol of its mountain heritage. The Great Northern carried reporting mark GN and was headquartered in St. Paul throughout most of its independent existence. After decades of efforts to merge with its neighboring railroads, a combination that had been sought since the early twentieth century and was blocked by regulators on multiple occasions, the merger was finally approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission and took effect on March 2, 1970. On that date, the Great Northern merged with the Northern Pacific, the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy, and the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway to form Burlington Northern Inc., one of the largest railroad combinations in American history to that point. The Great Northern thus became a fallen flag after nearly ninety years of independent operation. Burlington Northern continued to operate over the former Great Northern main line, and the legacy deepened further when Burlington Northern merged with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in 1995 to create BNSF Railway, which operates those routes today. Amtrak assumed the Empire Builder passenger service and still operates it across the former Great Northern corridor between Chicago and Seattle and Portland, preserving the name that Hill's railroad made famous. The Watertown and Sioux Falls Railway was among the smaller predecessor properties absorbed into the Great Northern system during its history of expansion, and the Great Northern's emphasis on low operating costs and carefully engineered main line trackage left a physical legacy that continues to support heavy freight operations across the northern tier of the American West more than a half century after the railroad itself ceased to exist as an independent entity.