BNSF Railway - Business

www bnsf com The BNSF Railway reporting mark BNSF formerly known as the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway is an American freight railroad company headquartered in Fort Worth Texas it is one of four remaining transcontinental railroads and one of the largest freight railroad networks in North America Only the Union Pacific Railroad its primary competitor for Western U S freight is larger in size The BNSF Railway moves more intermodal freight traffic than any other rail system in the world It was formed December 31 1996 as the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway when the Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway was merged into the Burlington Northern Railroad In 1999 BNSF and the Canadian National Railway announced their intention to merge and form a new corporation entitled the North American Railways to be headquartered in Montreal Canada The United States Surface Transportation Board STB placed a 15 month moratorium on all rail mergers which ended this merger On J anuary 24 2005 the railroad s name was officially changed to BNSF Railway The BNSF Railway is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation the holding company formed by the September 22 1995 merger of Burlington Northern Incorporated and the Santa Fe Pacific Corporation According to corporate press releases the BNSF Railway is among the top transporters of intermodal freight in North America It moves more grain than any other American railroad It also hauls enough coal to generate roughly 10 of the electricity produced in the United States The company s northern route completes the high speed link from the western to eastern United States On November 3 2009 Warren Buffett s Berkshire Hathaway announced that it would acquire the remaining 77 4 of BNSF that it didn t already own for 100 per share in cash and stock a deal valued at 44 billion The company is investing an estimated 34 billion in BNSF and acquiring 10 billion in debt On February 12 201 0 shareholders of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation voted in favor of the acquisition Contents 1 Operations 1 1 Markets and services 1 2 Finances 1 3 Trackage 1 4 Yards and facilities 1 5 Routes 1 6 Operating divisions 1 7 Passenger trains 1 8 Safety 1 9 Equipment 2 History 3 Public image 4 See also 5 References 6 External links Operations Markets and services With BNSF s large system it hauls many different commodities most notably coal and grain as well as intermodal freight Predecessor Burlington Northern Railroad BN entered Wyoming s low sulfur coal rich Powder River Basin in the 1970s through construction of the Powder River Basin Joint Line with Union Pacific Railroad predecessor Chicago and North Western Transportation Company Coal goes north in unit trains on the three to four track Joint Line to Gillette or south to Orin where older BN lines and other railroads take it in all directions to coal burning power plants BNSF serves over 1500 grain elevators locate d mostly in the Midwest on former BN lines Depending on where the markets are this grain may move in any direction in unit trains or wait in silos for demand to rise Most commonly grain may move west on the Northern Transcon to the Pacific Northwest and its export terminals or south to Texas and Gulf of Mexico ports The Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe Railway s main contribution to BNSF was the Southern Transcon a fast intermodal corridor connecting Southern California and Chicago Most traffic is either trailers of trucking companies such as intermodal partner J B Hunt or containers from the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles The latter begins its trip on the three track Alameda Corridor shared with the Union Pacific Railroad and then follows BNSF rails from downtown Los Angeles Its route the Southern Transcon has been almost completely double tracked and triple tracking has begun in areas such as Cajon Pass Finances BNSF Railway Company Founded January 13 1961 in Delaware as Great Northern Pacific Burlington Lines Inc Key people Matthew K Rose chairman president and CEO Revenue 18 132 372 000 14 Operating income 3 823 703 000 12 Net income 2 397 016 000 17 Total assets 35 702 439 000 8 Total equity 18 111 029 000 5 Employees 38 000 Parent Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation This section requires expansion Trackage This BNSF Loco No 7564 ES44DC was caught on the move out side the Battle Creek Michigan s CN Yard An eastbound BNSF Railway train passes some maintenance of way equipment in Prairie du Chien Wisconsin August 8 2004 The lead unit is painted in the Heritage II scheme The BNSF Railway directly owns and operates track in 27 U S states Alabama Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Idaho Illinois Iowa Kansas Louisiana Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Mexico North Dakota Oklahoma Oregon South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Washington Wisconsin and Wyoming The railway also operates a small amount of track in Canada i ncluding an approximate 30 mile 48 kilometer section that runs from the U S Canada border to Vancouver British Columbia a yard in Winnipeg Manitoba and approximately 70 miles of joint track with the Canadian National Railway which runs south to the U S border For administrative purposes BNSF is divided into fourteen operating divisions California Chicago Colorado Gulf Kansas Los Angeles Montana Nebraska Northwest Powder River Southwest Springfield Texas and Twin Cities Each division is further divided into hundreds of subdivisions which represent segments of track ranging from 300 mile mainlines to 10 mile branch lines Not including second third and fourth main line trackage yard trackage and siding trackage BNSF directly owns and operates over 24 000 miles 38 624 kilometers of track When these additional tracks are counted the length of track which the railway directly controls rises to more than 50 000 miles 80 467 kilometers Additionally BNSF Railway has gained trackage r ights on more than 8 000 miles 12 875 kilometers of track throughout the United States and Canada These rights allow the BNSF to operate its own trains with its own crews on competing railroads main tracks BNSF locomotives also occasionally show up on competitors tracks throughout the United States and Canada by way of leases mileage equalizations and other contractual arrangements Yards and facilities BNSF 880362 a tank car passing Glen Haven Wisconsin shows the new corporate logo on June 3 2006 BNSF operates various facilities all over the United States to support its transportation system Facilities operated by the railway include yards and terminals throughout its rail network system locomotive shops to perform locomotive service and maintenance a centralized operations center for train dispatching and network operations monitoring in Fort Worth and regional dispatching centers The BNSF Railway also operates numerous transfer facilities throughout the western United Stat es to facilitate the transfer of intermodal containers trailers and other freight traffic The BNSF Railway has direct control over a total of 33 intermodal hubs and 23 automotive distribution facilities On February 9 2005 BNSF announced that it plans to build a new intermodal transfer facility near the port of Los Angeles called the Southern California International Gateway The new facility with direct rail access to the recently constructed Alameda Corridor would supplement the container transloading abilities of the Intermodal Container Transfer Facility ICTF built by Southern Pacific in the 1990s Large freight car hump yards are also scattered throughout the BNSF system In 2005 Argentine Yard in Kansas City Kansas processed the most freight cars Further on there is a list of currently operating BNSF Hump Yards The BNSF mechanical division operates eight locomotive maintenance facilities that perform preventive maintenance repairs and servicing of equipment The largest of these facilities are located in Alliance Nebraska and Topeka Kansas The mechanical division also controls 46 additional facilities responsible for car maintenance and daily running repairs The BNSF system mechanical division a subset of the mechanical division operates two maintenance of way work equipment shops responsible for performing repairs and preventive maintenance to BNSF s track and equipment in Brainerd Minnesota and Galesburg Illinois The system mechanical division also operates the Western Fruit Express Company s refrigerated car repair shop in Spokane Washington In 2006 BNSF teamed with Vancouver WA based Tri Star to run BNSF s new transload facility in Fontana CA near the California Speedway BNSF operates hump yards in several cities Barstow California Barstow Yard Galesburg Illinois Galesburg Yard Kansas City Kansas Argentine Yard Memphis Tennessee Tennessee Yard Minneapolis Minnesota Northtown Yard Pasco Washington Pasco Yard Seattle Washington Balmer Yard T ulsa Oklahoma Cherokee Yard Lincoln Nebraska Hobson Yard Routes The Northern Transcon runs from Seattle Washington to Chicago Illinois It is the most northerly route of any railroad in the continental United States This was the route of the Great Northern Railway s Silk Extras in the 1920s They had priority over all other trains stopping only for refueling and crew changes These trains transported silk to the east from ships arriving in the Port of Seattle from Japan The Southern Transcon runs from Los Angeles California to Chicago Illinois The 2006 BNSF Annual Report states We also added about 33 miles of second main track on our main line between Chicago and Los Angeles All but 51 miles of this high volume 2 200 mile route were double track as of the end of 2006 Last year we ran 100 trains per day on this expanded main line compared with 60 per day in 2000 Technically it is not double tracked in mid Kansas where two routes are used Mulvane to Wichita to Newton to Emporia f or primarily eastbound traffic Emporia to El Dorado to Augusta to Mulvane for primarily westbound traffic In 2008 BNSF completed nearly 16 miles of a third main track through Cajon Pass in Southern California increasing capacity on our transcontinental main route between Chicago and Los Angeles from 100 to 150 trains per day BNSF started adding a second main track in Abo Canyon east of Belen New Mexico the largest bottleneck on the Transcon with grading in 2008 2009 bridges in 2010 and signal work in late 2010 or early 2011 Approximately 1 7 million cubic yards of rock need to be excavated mostly by blasting The 2008 BNSF Annual Report states Following completion of the Abo Canyon project scheduled in 2011 our 2 200ile Transcontinental Corridor between Southern California and Chicago will have only about 30 miles of single track The Powder River Basin supplies 40 of the coal in the United States The 2008 BNSF Annual Report states that the quadruple track project was complete d Operating divisions The BNSF system is divided into thirteen divisions which are grouped into three regions Each division includes numerous subdivisions normally comprising a single main line and branches A fourteenth division Colorado has been consolidated with the Powder River Division except for the Casper and Cody Subdivisions which were transferred to the Montana Division Region Division States and provinces Headquarters Subdivisions Notes South California California Nevada Utah San Bernardino CA Bakersfield Cajon Lucerne Valley Mojave Needles San Bernardino San Diego Stockton South Chicago Illinois Iowa Minnesota Missouri Wisconsin Chicago IL Aurora Barstow Brookfield Chicago Chillicothe Marceline Mendota Ottumwa Peoria St Croix Thomas Hill Central Gulf Arkansas Louisiana Texas Spring TX Bay City Conroe Galveston Houston Lafayette Lampasas Longview Mykawa Silsbee South Kansas Colorado Kansas Missouri Nebraska New Mexico Oklahoma Texas Kansas City KS Arkansas City Dou glass Emporia Hereford La Junta Panhandle Plainview Slaton Strong City Topeka South Los Angeles California Los Angeles CA Alameda Corridor Harbor San Bernardino North Montana Montana North Dakota Wyoming Billings MT Big Sandy Broadview Casper Choteau Circle Cody Colstrip Crosby Dickinson Fairfield Forsyth Ft Benton Glasgow Great Falls Grenora Helena Hettinger Hi Line Kootenai River Laurel Lewistown Milk River Mobridge Niobe Sarpy Line Sweet Grass Valier Central Nebraska Illinois Iowa Kansas Missouri Nebraska Lincoln NE Bayard Beatrice Bellwood Council Bluffs Creston Des Moines Giltner Hastings Lester Napier Neb City Omaha Ottumwa Ravenna Sioux City St Joseph Wymore North Northwest British Columbia California Idaho Montana Oregon Washington Seattle WA Bellingham Burbank Cherry Point Coeur d Alene Columbia River Fallbridge Gateway Kettle Falls Lakeside Newport New Westminster Oregon Trunk Scenic Seattle Spokane Stampede Sumas Woodinville Yakima Valley Central Powder River Colo rado Nebraska New Mexico Oklahoma South Dakota Texas Utah Wyoming Gillette WY Akron Angora Big Horn Black Hills Boise City Brush Butte Campbell Canyon Dalhart Dutch Front Range Golden Orin Pikes Peak Pueblo Reno Sand Hills Spanish Peaks Twin Peaks Valley South Southwest Arizona California Colorado New Mexico Texas Belen NM Clovis Coronado Defiance El Paso Ennis Gallup Glorieta Lee Ranch Phoenix Raton Seligman Springerville Central Springfield Alabama Arkansas Illinois Iowa Kansas Kentucky Mississippi Missouri Oklahoma Tennessee Springfield MO Afton Amory Avard Beardstown Birmingham Cherokee Cuba Fort Scott Hannibal Lead Line River Thayer North Thayer South Yates City Includes most of the former St Louis San Francisco Railway Central Texas Kansas Oklahoma Texas Alliance TX BBRX Chickasha Creek DFW Ft Worth Madill Red River Valley Red Rock Sooner Venus Wichita Falls North Twin Cities Iowa Manitoba Minnesota Nebraska North Dakota South Dakota Wisconsin Minneapolis MN Aberdeen A llouez Appleton Brainerd Browns Valley Canton Casco Clifford Line Corson Devils Lake Drayton Glasston Grand Forks Hanley Falls Hannah Hib Tac Hillsboro Hinc

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