Warren Buffett/Berkshire Hathaway, al;ready owners of 22% of Burlington northern's stock, is buying the entire railroad for $34 billion.
Quote:NEW YORK - Warren Buffett has made bets on railroads before, but now he's all in. The billionaire investor's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. on Tuesday agreed to buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., making a $34 billion bet on the future of the U.S. economy.
Burlington Northern, the nation's second-largest railroad, is the biggest hauler of food products like corn, and coal for electricity, making it an indicator of the country's economic health. The railroad also ships a large amount of consumer goods — including items imported from Asia — from big Western ports like Los Angeles and Seattle.
Analysts say Buffett is planting both feet in an industry that is poised to grow as the economy gets back on solid ground. It would be the biggest acquisition ever for Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
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It will be interesting to see what effect this has locally, as the line passes right through Palmer Lake, not far from my location.
very interesting. A little off topic - but I find it interesting to read about these non-standard economic indicators. Things such as the nature of classified advertising, the types of job postings, the number of railroad cars and type of railroad cars on trains, the amount of railroad cars in storage, the number of yard sales on the weekend, et cetera. If you have the money to invest, a recession is a good time to double your fortune. Buy things when the prices are down!
There has been a lot of traffic on the Santa Fe boards suggesting that he should change the name to "Buffet's New Santa Fe."
Saw that on the news tonight.
Is he buying just the Burlington Northern?...Or the Santa Fe also?
eightyeightfan1 Wrote:Saw that on the news tonight.
Is he buying just the Burlington Northern?...Or the Santa Fe also?
He bought the rest of the stock, or at least controlling interest in the BNSF.
That's one big train set!!
Bad reporting propagated by uniformed railfans. Burlington Northern and Santa Fe independently have not exited since 1996 when they were merged into a single company called Burlington Northern Santa Fe. That railroad officially changed its name to "BNSF Railway" wiping out any direct use of predecessor names much like CSX did in the 1980s. The combined Burlington Northern Santa Fe system used the "BNI" stock symbol which many financial journalists still associate with the old Burlington Northern, accounting for its mis-use in the news stories. Unfortunately a number of model railroaders don't come out of their workshop enough to notice these changes and believe Burlington Northern and/or Santa Fe are still independent operations and have propagated the stories verbatim on a number of message boards.
railohio Wrote:Bad reporting propagated by uniformed railfans. Burlington Northern and Santa Fe independently have not exited since 1996 when they were merged into a single company called Burlington Northern Santa Fe. That railroad officially changed its name to "BNSF Railway" wiping out any direct use of predecessor names much like CSX did in the 1980s. The combined Burlington Northern Santa Fe system used the "BNI" stock symbol which many financial journalists still associate with the old Burlington Northern, accounting for its mis-use in the news stories. Unfortunately a number of model railroaders don't come out of their workshop enough to notice these changes and believe Burlington Northern and/or Santa Fe are still independent operations and have propagated the stories verbatim on a number of message boards.
Some may even go trackside and still see BN and Santa Fe cars which doesn't help the misinformed or causal modeler...I have pictures of SP and MP cars as well..
It doesn't help matters when misinformed railfans (I know you see 'em) or follow club member makes a "hail mary" statement during a discussion..
Nice read and they called it BNSF..
Of course savvy railfans knows what BNSF really means:Buy Norfolk Southern First.
One of our TV stations had lovely pictures of blue Geeps with the big Santa Fe lettering on them.
I don't think it's always railfans getting it wrong; the news reporters probably chop the name.
I think most of the discussion gets a bit off base because the Santa Fe fans want to see the Santa Fe return, and BN has done as much as they could to erase all evidence of Santa Fe from the current fleet. We still have some blue & yellow freight bonnets and red & silver Superfleet units only because they haven't had time to paint them, yet. As far as I'm concerned the various "pumpkins" are disgusting!
BR60103 Wrote:One of our TV stations had lovely pictures of blue Geeps with the big Santa Fe lettering on them.
I don't think it's always railfans getting it wrong; the news reporters probably chop the name.
That's exactly what I said, bad reporting propagated by railfans who didn't know any better. Many media outlets got it wrong and railfans pasted it verbatim to every message board, right or wrong. The whole morning it broke CNN was calling it "Burlington Northern" and I haven't seen a report by them since to know if they finally got it right.
railohio Wrote:BR60103 Wrote:One of our TV stations had lovely pictures of blue Geeps with the big Santa Fe lettering on them.
I don't think it's always railfans getting it wrong; the news reporters probably chop the name.
That's exactly what I said, bad reporting propagated by railfans who didn't know any better. Many media outlets got it wrong and railfans pasted it verbatim to every message board, right or wrong. The whole morning it broke CNN was calling it "Burlington Northern" and I haven't seen a report by them since to know if they finally got it right.
Of course some railroaders still say things like"The B&O diamonds at Attica","The CR diamonds at Marion" and other such statements..Of course some railroaders give misinformation as well based on rumors or half facts..
I doubt if railfans don't know any better. It is probably more a case of railfans who refuse to lose a favorite railroad. In addition BNSF is the one merger that has to some extent propogated the problem by keeping the SF in their name. Most of the other mergers, the railroad buying out the other road does everything they can to erase the memory of the bought out road as soon as possible. U.P. bought out S.P. & CNW abot the same time as the BNSF merger, how many locomotives on the U.P. continue to run in the original colors with the original names on the side compared to the number of Santa Fe locomotives in the original Santa Fe colors with Santa Fe on the side and BNSF on a small patch under the cab window? I continue to refer to my favorite railroad as the Santa Fe even though it is gone and I hate orange & green. I'm not ignorant of the situation, just that as far as I'm concerned, time stopped when BN and SF merged.