September 22, 1995 - BNSF Merger

On September 22, 1995, the BNSF Railway was created by the merger of Burlington Northern & the Santa Fe.

BNSF has 35,000 miles of track in 28 Western states & Canada; 41,000 employees and over 8,000 locomotives. In 2017, it shipped over 10 million carloads and had a capital investment of $3.3 billion.

BNSF is the product of 390 predecessor railroads that were merged or acquired over a period of 160 years.

The first BNSF predecessor, the 12-mile Aurora Branch Line in Illinois, was founded in 1849.

The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway was founded in 1859.

The Burlington Northern Railroad was created in 1970 with the merger of the Chicago Burlington & Quincy; the Great Northern; the Northern Pacific; the Spokane, Portland and Seattle; and the Pacific Coast Railroad.

In 2005, the company took a new name, BNSF Railway, and a new logo.

On February 12,  2010, BNSF became part of Berkshire Hathaway, when Warren Buffett purchased the railroad.

The BNSF logo, at top left, was introduced in 2005. The logo at top right is obsolete. The others represent some of the railroads that became part of BNSF.