BNSF Symbols

For years, trains in North America ran under a numbering system. Various railroads used different conventions for those systems, but it normally broke a number down into the Class of the train and which direction it was heading. Over the years, some railroads started playing with Alpha-Numeric symbols in an attempt to make the symbol a little easier to understand as to its origination/destination points (famously pioneered by the Southern Pacific). Through various mergers, acquisitions and what not, some of these new Alpha-Numeric symbols survived while other railroads went back to simple numbers.

Most of the eastern and Canadian railroads stuck with numbers, and once you understand how the numbers are assigned, it becomes fairly easy to see the logic behind them. Canadian National, on the other hand, expanded on the number system and now their trains run with a 5-digit number as the symbol (although its usually only the first three digits that are referenced as the train number). Kansas City Southern and Union Pacific both use the traditional Alpha-Numeric system, and many Class II and Shortline railroads have adopted a version of this. They have all followed some basic rules in applying these symbols, and you can get a sense of this by visiting the Second Sections or Extra Trains page for more information.

Then there's BNSF, who have made train symbols a science rather than an art form. Before the big merger that formed the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, both BN and ATSF ran with a numbering system for their trains. Both systems were neat and easy to understand. ATSF ran their trains with three-number symbols, indicating the originating region, the type of train and the terminating region. Chicago was in the #1 region and Northern California was #9, so the hottest train on the system was the 199 train (with its counterpart, the 991. These were UPS-dedicated trailer trains run between the Santa Fe's Willow Springs Yard near Chicago, to North Bay, CA. The middle '9' denoted a very hot train, and the lesser priority trains dropped down in number.

BN ran an even simpler system, with low-digit numbers being assigned to the hottest trains. #1 was the hot-shot from the former CB&Q Cicero Yard in Chicago, to South Seattle. #3 was the same type of train but ended up in Portland, OR. Under this system, the higher the number, the lower class a train had (with a bunch of locals in the 900s). Other conventions stood up over the years as well, with the 112/113 combination being an interchange train from Southern Pacific running between Portland and Seattle, which offered shippers a 'through-train' service on both railroads.

Unless you work at BNSF's headquarters in Ft. Worth, TX or have access to the Crew Management System on a computer, it is very difficult to discern what has become of the BNSF symbol system. There are commonalities between the train types, but BNSF is constantly fiddling with the way they symbol their trains, and recently did a complete overhaul of the intermodal business and changed all the symbols for those trains. In this article, we will do a deep dive into the workings of a BNSF symbol so the player may have a better understanding of what they're looking at when deciding which symbol to attach to a BNSF train in FYM. Changes/questions/comments are always appreciated and can be sent to KEL27.