Talk:BNSF Railway

CN merger?

The article on BNSF is very incomplete for such a large company. A segment on the proposed merger with the Canadian National needs to be added. -- 2005 July 10

Name is WRONG

I used to be a stickler for the fact that the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company was a subsidiary of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation.

Except that this is no longer the case. The railway is now BNSF Railway. See this press release.

--Plaws 21:03, 2005 Jun 26 (UTC)

Personally, I wouldn't mind if the page was moved to BNSF Railway (which currently redirects here). It's not like BNSF is a new iteration of an old company (like the discussion that we had a little while ago on General Motors Electro-Motive Division after that company became Electro-Motive Diesel, Inc. We also had discussions on other railroad articles about the article name (Milwaukee Road and Soo Line come to mind right away) where we've settled on the longer official names for the article titles. Since there isn't a change of ownership with BNSF, it's a little easier for me to justify the page move. However, I have no strong feelings either way, as redirects are cheap. slambo 21:19, Jun 26, 2005 (UTC)

I don't know the mechanics of it, but could we just flip the redirect the other way? --Plaws July 1, 2005 15:45 (UTC)

Page moved

Moved from Burlington Northern Railroad. Text on the page referred to the new railroad, so clearly misnamed. --Morven 18:02, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Images

I neatened the image display, but does this article need all the pictures? —Morven 09:39, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)

(okay, a really late comment, but it didn't pop up on my watchlist until the comment below...) I think more than photos of the stations and track, it needs some photos of BNSF trains in operation. I've got some in my own collection, I'll see about uploading a couple of action shots tomorrow. slambo 21:13, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Well, there's one photo from last August. All my BNSF shots from Rochelle Railroad Park have the sun on the wrong side of the train so the lighting's pretty bad (UP photos, however, that's a different story). slambo 14:29, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

That's a nice picture. I have a few BNSF pictures, being in BNSF territory, so I may see if I have any good ones to add too ... —Morven 15:56, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. I especially like the way the train is kicking up the dust from the tie replacement work that was going on that day. We arrived at the spot for railfanning just as the tie crew was starting to work in the area, and after a quick chat with the foreman on site, we got to see (and video) the whole thing. Way cool! slambo 16:09, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

"Power Bar" logo

It's notable that railfans detest the new logo, which is rather uninspired to say the least. —Morven 20:40, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm not too pleased with the new logo either (and I stated so on my personal page [1]). My disappointment is that the new logo completely removes the ATSF circle-and-cross emblem, and neither this nor the previous logo include any aspect of BN's embedded N-in-a-B emblem. We got over the loss of the bn.com domain to a book seller, I guess we'll get over this too (and come up with our own names for the new logo ;-) ). slambo 21:13, Feb 10, 2005 (UTC)

People on the railpictures.net message boards have taken to underlining BNSF ...

This 'Hey, let's go by our initials' thing is so .. 80s. I guess 1980s fashions are back, why not 1980s corporate naming fashions too? At least they didn't rename themselves something like Deliverature ... following the previous corporate naming fad. Personally, I can deal with the initials, it's the logo that's truly bad. It's replacing something classy with something that looks like a kid at the local Kinkos drew it. I hope they didn't pay someone good money for that design. Union Pacific must be laughing their asses off; BNSF might know how to run a railway better, but UP certainly knows how to do the corporate image thing. —Morven 15:37, Feb 11, 2005 (UTC)

On a railfanning trip this weekend to Glen Haven, Wisconsin (a friend of mine has a house on the BNSF mainline there), I heard that the new logo has been named the "Power Bar" logo due to its resemblance to the logos on the athletic snack. slambo 19:50, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

Name?

So is it the Burlington Northern Santa Fe or Burlington Northern and Santa Fe? --SPUI (talk) 18:29, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

The official company name is "Burlington Northern and Sante Fe Railway Company". However, looking at older versions of their website, they describe themselves as "Burlington Northern Santa Fe" and their logo says "Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway" so I'm inclined to go with "Burlington Northern Santa Fe". JYolkowski // talk 19:07, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Actually, the latest is officially "BNSF Railway" (see this press release from January 24 2005), so we should probably think about a move to that name soon. slambo 02:55, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, it's "BNSF Railway Company", but I don't know if that matters much. I was all set to come over here and move the thing, and then I saw the absolutely prodigious number of links that would have to be chased down, and I chickened out. Is there a plan for dealing with that? /blahedo (t) 05:25, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I haven't seen anyone propose a strategy for going after such a move, however, in the article naming standards that we've discussed previously on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains, we generally don't use the word "company" or others like it in article titles (for example, "Boston and Maine Corporation" was moved to Boston and Maine Railroad earlier this year). If this page were to be moved, I'd support a move to "BNSF Railway" more than "BNSF Railway Company". slambo 13:54, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, the vast majority of railroad companies officially have "Company" at the end. A large number also have a "The" at the beginning. As for fixing links, all that needs to be fixed is the redirects. Anyway, if someone can get the information, there should be a section of the article describing the exact names and when it used each. --SPUI (talk) 14:54, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

A search through [2] for BNSF shows that it's now "BNSF Railway Company". The changeover was around the end of 2004/beginning of 2005, before which it was "Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company". In 1996, when they were merging, it was "Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation" and "BNSF Acquisition Corporation". Looks like it was always BN&SF for the railway and BNSF for the holding company. --SPUI (talk) 14:54, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

And that's what Plaws says above - looks good. Anyone else agree with a move to BNSF Railway, and a drive to weed out Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway links (as it was never called that)? --SPUI (talk) 14:56, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Obviously, I think this is a good idea. Here's some help for folks who can't keep it all straight, right from the company website:

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation, publicly traded parent company of BNSF Railway

Pretty clear, IMHO. If we do a "move", the redirection takes care of all the links, right? --Plaws 19:55, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

I started converting references on the page itself from Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway to BNSF Railway. What is the wikipedia convention for usage, i.e. a second reference? Can we just use the full name at the beginning and then just refer to "BNSF" or "the company" or "the railway" later on? --Plaws 20:24, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

For the first reference, I usually use the full name. If I'm going to reference a railroad later by reporting marks or by a common abbreviation, then I put it in parentheses right after the long name and then use the abbreviation almost exclusively from then on. Otherwise, I'll usually refer to "the railroad" or "the railway" in the article text. slambo 01:33, September 7, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, you can just use "BNSF" later on. --SPUI (talk) 20:30, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I've gone and moved it, and fixed the redirects. As for the links to Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, which were never correct, do people think those should all be changed to BNSF Railway, or should ones referring to the company pre-2005 be Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway? --SPUI (talk) 20:39, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Northern Route Section

Is this really needed? Or can someone knowledgeable about it clean up the writing? The pictures seem kind of worthless too....they would probably serve better on the Empire Builder page. Schnauf 07:32, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

IS this correct? One of the routes operated by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe traverses the most northerly route of any railroad in the western United States. This route was originally part of the Northern Pacific Railway system, followed by the Burlington Northern Railroad system.

IF my memory is correct (I grew up along the Quincy branch of CB&Q), the Great Northern had the most northern route in the US. Also little mention of the Spokane trackage in Washington state - which is part of the original: SP&S; GN; NP and CB&Q railroad mergers in 1970.G. Beat 19:25, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

The Great Northern route was north of the Northern Pacific route. West of Spokane the BNSF primarily uses the Great Northern route through the Cascade tunnel under Stevens pass which is way north of the Stampede pass tunnel used by the Northern Pacific. The reason the Northern Pacific route is lightly used is that double stacked container cars are too tall to go through the Stampede pass tunnel. I guess the question is "East of Spokane does the BNSF use the Great Northern or Northern Pacific tracks or both"?

Burlington & White

05-259 (06/22/06) Burlington N. & S.F.R. CO. v. White I'm not well-enough versed in the topic to create a dedicated, full-length article on this case. If someone does want to create the seperate article, please remove the relevant section in this article and add a link to the seperate page and a cursory mention of the case in this article's introduction. Thanks! MrZaius^talk 20:13, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I've added the SCOTUS tag to this article, as it is redirected to from that case article-name. When the SCOTUS case article is started, pleas move the SCOTUS tag from this article to that one.