Burlington Northern

From The Matrix

The Burlington Northern Railroad (AAR reporting mark BN) was a United States-based railroad operating between 1970 and 1995.

The Burlington Northern was the product of a 1970 merger comprising the Great Northern Railroad; the Northern Pacific Railway; the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad; and the Spokane, Portland, and Seattle Railway.

The Burlington Northern's locomotive livery painted the top quarter or so of the locomotive black and the rest green, with a white 'BN' logo. Often, the front of the locomotive was striped with white and green for visibility.

In 1995, the Burlington Northern merged with the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (ATSF) to form the new Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF), possibly the largest railroad in the United States by track mileage.

The Burlington Northern traverses the most northerly route of any railroad in the western United States. This route starts at Chicago Illinois and runs north to Milwaukee Wisconsin. From here the route runs northwest through Minneapolis-St. Paul Minnesota to Grand Forks North Dakota. From Grand Forks the route runs west through North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho to Spokane, Washington. At Spokane the route splits running to Seattle Washington and to Portland Oregon. This route required constructing the Flathead Tunnel through the Rocky Mountains in Montana and the Cascade Tunnel through the Cascade Mountains in Washington.