Burlington Northern

Railroads changed the course of the 19th century history just as aviation and the internet did in the 20th. Today there are four railroad systems in the United States, two in the West (BNSF, previously known as Burlington Northern Santa Fe, and Union Pacific) and two in the East (Norfolk Southern and CSX), all the results of a series of mergers that climaxed in the 1980s.

Burlington Northern is now owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.



That's a boring logo. Warren Buffett is a financial genius and he's built a great company, but the logo looks like it was designed by a ten-year old geek. Type name, pick a font, done. Luckily, the railroads that were merged into the Burlington Northern had better logos.

The Burlington Northern started in the Midwest in 1848 when the Chicago and Aurora Railroad was founded. It later became the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy.



1970 saw the merger of four railroads into what became known as the Burlington Northern. They were the Great Northern Railway,  the Northern Pacific Railway,  the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, and the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway.

  

In 1996 the Burlington Northern merged with the Atcheson, Topeka and Santa Fe railway. Their routes were complementary, as the Santa Fe lines went south while the Burlington Northern lines covered the upper Midwest, Rocky Mountain states and into the Pacific Northwest.



For a while, the combined company kept the elegant round logo of the Santa Fe and its blue color, before going to the rectangular version, and finally slimming down the name to letters only and changing the colors as well.