Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad

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Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) was a big Midwestern railroad, often called the Burlington Route or simply the Q. It ran a large network across states from Colorado and Texas to Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and beyond, linking Chicago with Denver, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, St. Louis, Kansas City, and other key cities. The railroad advertised itself with slogans like Everywhere West, Way of the Zephyrs, and The Way West.

Origins and growth
- The beginning came from the Aurora Branch Railroad, chartered in 1848 by residents of Aurora and Batavia, Illinois, to reach Chicago without being bypassed by existing lines. The Aurora Branch opened a route from Aurora to Turner Junction (now West Chicago) and into Chicago by 1864.
- The Chicago and Aurora Railroad (the early name for parts of the system) was renamed and reorganized several times, eventually becoming the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad in 1855 through a consolidation of several smaller lines.
- The CB&Q expanded westward in the following decades. In 1868 it gained through connections by building Mississippi River bridges at Burlington, Iowa, and Quincy, Illinois, which linked it to the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad and to other western lines. By 1882 it had reached Denver, Colorado, through its western extensions.
- The Burlington Route grew into a very large system, reaching about 12,000 route miles by the 1920s and serving fourteen states. Its primary hubs were Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis–Saint Paul, St. Louis, and Kansas City. The company’s broad presence in the Midwest and West helped shape travel and commerce across the region.

Key people and business strategy
- The CB&Q’s rapid post-Civil War growth was guided by strong financial management in the hands of leaders like John Murray Forbes and Charles Elliott Perkins. Perkins, in particular, built a powerful, more integrated system by absorbing and organizing loosely connected affiliates, which helped triple the railroad’s size during his presidency (1881–1901).
- By the turn of the century, the CB&Q’s ambitions extended toward creating a major transcontinental network. It pursued connections with James J. Hill’s Great Northern and with other lines to form a broader western system. By 1900, the CB&Q was closely tied to, and sometimes controlled by, Great Northern and Northern Pacific interests.

A notable strike and its impact
- The Burlington strike of 1888 was the railroad’s only major labor conflict. It lasted about ten months and involved highly skilled engineers and firemen. The company spent heavily on strikebreakers, lawsuits, and security, ultimately achieving a victory in labor terms but at a significant financial and morale cost. The strike occurred during a period of economic difficulty that helped tip the railroad toward later challenges.

Mid-20th-century changes and innovations
- After 1901, the CB&Q continued to expand, acquiring rival lines such as the Colorado and Southern Railway and the Fort Worth and Denver Railway in 1908, which opened routes to Dallas, Houston, and Galveston. The railroad entered the Mississippi and Missouri valleys more deeply and grew into a vast network.
- The CB&Q was a pioneer in several technical and service innovations. It introduced:
- Printing telegraph (1910)
- Train radio communications (1915)
- Streamlined diesel-powered passenger trains, the Zephyrs (first run in 1934), including the famous Denver Zephyr that traveled from Denver to Chicago in a dawn-to-dusk run
- Vista-dome passenger cars (introduced in the 1940s)
- Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) starting in 1927, one of the first major railroads to adopt it; by 1957, CB&Q had outfitted about 1,500 miles of track with CTC
- Early use of air brakes for freight service
- The CB&Q built and operated one of the nation’s first large hump classification yards in Cicero Avenue, Chicago, enabling round-the-clock yard work with remote switching control. It also experimented with early diesel and hybrid propulsion, including doodlebug gas-electric cars and diesel switchers, paving the way for later dieselization.

World War II and postwar era
- The railroad’s wartime freight work surged, with freight tonnage peaking during the war. After the war, CB&Q continued converting to diesel locomotives as part of a large $140 million dieselization program. The last steam passenger trains were retired in the early 1950s, and by the late 1950s most surviving steam locomotives were reassigned to freight or yard work.
- The Zephyrs remained a symbol of mid-20th-century rail travel, and CB&Q continued to operate a wide slate of famous passenger trains through the postwar era, often in partnerships with other western railroads.

End of CB&Q and formation of Burlington Northern
- In the mid-1960s the railroad faced ongoing declines in passenger traffic and rising costs. Leadership changes followed, and the focus shifted toward reducing expenses and restructuring freight operations.
- On March 2, 1970, the CB&Q merged with the Great Northern Railway, the Northern Pacific Railway, and the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway to form the Burlington Northern Railroad (BN). This was a major reorganization that combined several large western lines into one company. In 1971, most passenger services were handed over to Amtrak, marking the end of CB&Q as an independent passenger carrier.
- The BN would later merge with Santa Fe to form BNSF Railway, continuing the CB&Q legacy within a larger modern system.

Preserved locomotives and memory
- Many CB&Q locomotives and cars have been preserved across museums and railfan sites. Notable examples include Zephyr units, steam locomotives such as 4960 and 5632, and various diesels like the BN era units. Museums and railroads across Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and other states maintain CB&Q equipment and display it for the public.

In short
The CB&Q was a defining Midwest railroad that grew from a small 19th-century branch line into a vast western network crucial to the region’s development. It was at the forefront of railway innovation, from the Zephyr trains to centralized traffic control, and its legacy lives on in the Burlington Northern and later BNSF systems that operate today.