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Profiles of The Predecessor Companies- The following are profiles taken from 1956 and 1972 Pocket Lists of Railroad Officials,
no longer in the author's collection, covering the companies that form today's Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway. Profiles
are either 1972 or 1956 as indicated:
1.Great Northern Railway 1956 Profile
Miles: 8806
Locomotives: 273 road, 114 switchers
Freight cars : 38,204
Passenger cars: 22 RDC, 4 gas-electric, 715 locomotive hauled.
Misc. (Company Service): 3836
2.Atchison,Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, 1972 Profile
Miles: 12,813
Locomotives: 1612 road, 205 switchers, 1817 total.
Freight cars: 75,283.
At that time, operating divisions were: Illinois, Eastern Southern, Northern, Albuquerque, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado,
Los Angeles, Valley, all organized into Eastern Lines, Western Lines, and Coast Lines.
3.Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway 1956
Miles:962
Locomotives: 91
Freight Cars: 3448
Passenger Cars: 54
Miscellaneous: 430
Billed as The Northwest's own Railway, this railroad was jointly owned by the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railway
and served its three namesake cities and handled the through freight and passenger trains of both its owners.
4 .St.Louis-San Francisco Railway (1956)
Miles: 4610
Locomotives:321
Freight Cars: 25,739
Passenger cars; 251
Miscellaneous( company service): 1855
Feature passenger trains: The Meteor, The Sunnyland, The Will Rogers, the Texas Special, the last of which was discontinued
in 1967 making Frisco freight only.
5 .Northern Pacific Railway
Miles: 6589
Locomotives: 650
Freight Cars: 36,563
Passenger cars: 517
Miscellaneous: 4010
6.Chicago,Burlington & Quincy Railroad
Miles: 8806
Locomotives: 415 road, 150 switchers
Passenger cars: 1072
Freight Cars: 42,796
Feature Passenger trains: California Zephyr, Denver Zephyr, Twin Zephyrs, Sam Houston Zephyr and the following
Northern Lines trains: Empire Builder, Western Star, North Coast Limited, and Main Streeter.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe 2001 Profile
Mileage: 33,063
Locomotives:4862
Freight Cars: 104,939
Miles of road owned; 25,365
Carloads originated: 6,928,188
Tons Originated: 442,932,381
Ton Miles:501,828,950,000
Operating Divisions are: Chicago, Kansas,Springfield, Texas, Dakota, Twin Cities,Southwestern, Northwestern, Southern
California,Northern California, Powder River.
Amtrak trains operated on BNSF: California Zephyr; Chicago-Denver, Empire Builder;Minnneapolis-Seattle, Cascades;Seattle-Vancouver,BC,
Sunset Limited,New Orleans-Houston, Southwest Chief, Chicago-Los Angeles;Heartland Flyer; Fort Worth-Oklahoma City, Illinois
Zephyr; Chicago-Quincy.
Other scheduled passenger service; METRA commuter service Chicago to Aurora,Sounder service between Seattle and Tacoma,
and several Metrolink routes in the Los Angeles area.
BNSF FREIGHT CAR FLEET BY CAR TYPE
The following snapshot of BNSF's freight car fleet came from January 2004 Trains Magazine:
1.Covered Hoppers, 38,707
2.Tank (co. service) 549
3.Gondola 12,958
4.Boxcars 10,127
5.Flatcars 19,189
6.Open Top Hoppers 9,102
7.Refrigerator 6,147
Total BNSF 96,780
Note that the covered hopper car is the most numerous single car type in the fleet, since BNSF handles more grain traffic
than any other railroad. Burlington Northern Santa Fe is second only to Union Pacific in the handling of perishable goods,
thus the relatively large fleet of refrigerator cars. For handling carload freight traffic, Burlington Northern Santa Fe has
adoped a hub and spoke system of moving this traffic from loading dock to loading dock. The 10 major hubs used for this service
are as follows:
1.Galesburg
2.Northtown
3.Memphis
4.Tulsa
5.Kansas City
6.Lincoln
7.Denver
8.Pasco
9.Stockton
10.Barstow
Seven of these also have intermodal terminals as well. This traffic is handled on a point to point basis rather than the hub
and spoke system as carload traffic is now handled.
TRAIN SYMBOLING
Like most other major railroads, Burlington Northern Santa Fe uses an alpha coding or alphabet soup system of symbolling its
trains. While other railroads use two letter codes to indicate origin and destination of a given train, BNSF uses three letter
codes for origin and destination designations, with unit coal and taconite trains being the exception. First Character indicates
the type of train operated on the schedule. Characters 2-4 indicate the originating terminal, while 5-7 indicate the train's
destination. Character 8 indicates any of the following:
1. 1st section of train out of origin
2. 2nd section of train out of origin
3. unscheduled train
4.Designated HAZMAT train
5. unscheduled train.
7. denotes electric brakes or distributed power
8. Critical arrival 2nd section out of origin.
Characters 9-10 indicate calendar day of the month the train originate.
TRAIN TYPES- The following are the principal train types operated on BNSF lines:
A. Amtrak train
B. bare table intermodal train
C.Loaded unit coal train
D.light engines
E.empty unit coal train
F.foreign road detour train over BNSF
G.Loaded unit grain train
H.High Priority Merchandise Train
I.Deadhead Crew Moves
J.Hiwide Dimensional Special
K.Helpers
L.Regularly scheduled local train.
M.Normal priority merchandise train
N.Hours of service Relief Special.
O.Officers' Special.
P.Premium Service Intermodal Train
Q.Guranteed Service Intermodal train
R. Regularly scheduled Road Switcher
S.Intermodal stack train
T.Transfer SErvice-interchange deliveries/receipts.
U.Unit train, other than coal or grain.
V.Vehicle Train (auto parts/automobiles)
W.Work Train
X. Empty Unit Grain Train
Y. Regularly scheduled Yard Job.
Z. UPS-LTL Guaranteed Service Intermodal Train
In the category of regularly scheduled local train, in addition to local freights, the METRA Chicago-Aurora commuter fleet
operated by BNSF fleet and those Metrolink commuter trains in the Los Angeles Area and Seattle area Sounder commuter trains
also fall in this category. These trains and Amtrak trains retain their operating numbers. Current Amtrak routes operated
over BNSF include the following: Chicago-Kansas City-Albuquerque-Needles-Barstow-Los Angeles- Southwest Chief (ATSF);Heartland
Flyer; Fort Worth-Oklahoma City (ATSF);California Zephyr (Chicago-Denver portion, rest of route is via Union Pacific), Illinois
Zephyr, Chicago-Quincy; Empire Builder; Twin Cities-Seattle; Cascades Portland-Seattle (Vancouver).
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