History
The Burlington Northern Railroad was the product of a March 2, 1970 merger that involved four major railroads: the Great Northern Railway, Northern Pacific Railway, Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad as well as a few small jointly-owned subsidiaries owned by the four. Although the four railroads shared common ownership (including the headquarters building in Saint Paul, Minnesota) from the days of the James J. Hill era, the four railroads previously have unsuccessfully attempted four mergers to unify the Hill Lines: 1896, 1901, 1927 and 1955. Surprisingly the merger was finally approved in 1970 even though a challenge occurred in the Supreme Court, which reversed the result of the 1904 Northern Securities ruling.
To further expand the Burlington Northern, a single track was constructed in 1972 into the Powder River Basin to serve various coal mines. On November 21, 1980, the St. Louis - San Francisco Railway was acquired, giving the railroad trackage as far south into Florida. By 1981 however, the holding company of the railroad, Burlington Northern, Inc. relocated headquarters from Saint Paul, Minnesota to Seattle, Washington and spun off all non-rail operations to Burlington Resources in 1988.
In 1971 BN/C&S/FW&D carried 64116 million revenue ton-miles of freight; in 1979 the total was 135004 million. Most of the increase was Powder River coal from Wyoming, a fount of traffic unprecedented in United States railroad history, and one which BN had to itself until 1984.
On September 21, 1995, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway merged into the Burlington Northern to create the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. However the merger was not official until December 31, 1996 when the a common dispatching system was established, Santa Fe's non-union dispatchers were unionized and the implementation of Santa Fe's train identification codes systemwide. On January 24, 2005, the railroad shortened its name to BNSF Railway.
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