What if…UP had gotten the Santa Fe instead of BN in the bidding war back in '95? Would Up still have gotten SP, or would the SP become part of the BN, creating BNSP? Would the Transcon be a sea of yellow right now, or would KCS or another railroad get trackage rights on the UP/SF line from KC to LA or beyond? Would the Gateway Sub of BNSF been torn up?
That probably would have been an OK arrangment. I’d guess it would have required far fewer trackage rights issues than UP-SP did. You’d have had competing routes from the Midwest to all points west w/o the need for trackage rights. The SP already had a really fast Chicago to LA route via Tucumcari NM. If BN could come up with the money to fix it up, they could have given the ATSF transcon a run for their money (UP might yet!)
You would have Warbonnets with Yellow Rectangles under the windows…
If that happaned BN should have merged with C&NW and became the Burlington Northwestern, mainly because I liked the colors of both roads.