November 21 marks the 29th anniversary of the merger of the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway with Burlington Northern. The merger extended BN's reach from Seattle, WA to Pensacola, FL, and made it the largest railroad in the US (at least until UP's merger with WP and MP several years later). Frisco's fate wasn't bad compared to the Rock Island (ceased operations March 31 of that year) or the Milwaukee Road (ceased operations on the Pacific Extension west of Miles City, MT). It wasn't one of the bankrupt lines of the 1970s (see Penn Central, Jersey Central, EL, Reading, LV, Ann Arbor, CRIP, MILW), wasn't lumped with other bankrupts into a government-funded line (Conrail, although this railroad got much better later on), and actually was in a stragegic location for traffic from the Pacific Northwest to the Southeast. St. Louis-San Francisco Ry. 1876-1980 FRISCO- GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
And many of the management positions at the "new" BN were taken over by SLSF personnel. Some have even said that Frisco took over the whole railroad.
It's a common practice. The merged company has it's people placed into top leadership positions. In this instance, it didn't work very well. Boxcab E50
