Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway

The **Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway**  (often referred to as the **Santa Fe** or **AT&SF**) was a large railroad in the United States. Created in February 1859, the railroad reached the Kansas-Colorado border in 1873 and Pueblo, Colorado, in 1876. To create a demand for its services, the railroad set up real estate offices and sold farm land. Despite the name, its main railroad never served Santa Fe, New Mexico. This was because the terrain was too rough. A branch line from Lamy reached Santa Fe instead.

The railroad officially ended on December 31, 1996, when it merged with the Burlington Northern Railroad to form the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway.

The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF) was created on February 11, 1859, to join Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, with Santa Fe, New Mexico. In its early years, the railroad helped people settle in Kansas. A lot of its revenue came from wheat grown there and from cattle driven north from Texas to Wichita and Dodge City by September 1872.

AT&SF reached Albuquerque in 1880. Santa Fe (the original goal of the railroad) was on a short branch from Lamy, New Mexico.

## Burlington Northern merger

On September 22, 1995, AT&SF merged with Burlington Northern Railroad to form the Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway (BNSF). The two lines kept separate operations until December 31, 1996 when it officially became BNSF.

|Gross operating revenue|||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
||align=center|**1870**|align=center|**1945**|
|align=right|$182,580|align=right|$528,080,530||
|align=right|62 miles (100 km)|align=right|13,115 miles (21,107 km)||
|align=right|98,920 tons|align=right|59,565,100 tons||
|align=right|33,630|align=right|11,264,000||
|align=right|6|align=right|1,759||
|align=right|141|align=right|81,974 freight cars 1,436 passenger cars||
- <small>Source: Santa Fe Railroad (1945), _Along Your Way_, Rand McNally, Chicago, Illinois.</small>

||ATSF/GC&SF/P&SF|Oklahoma City-Ada-Atoka|FtWorth & Rio Grande|KCM&O/KCM&O of Texas|Clinton & Oklahoma Western|New Mexico Central|
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|13862|14|42|330|2|1||
|8712|12|18|(incl P&SF)|(incl P&SF)|(incl ATSF)||
|37603|45|(incl GC&SF)|||||
|36635|20||||||
|48328|(merged)||||||

||ATSF/GC&SF/P&SF|Oklahoma City-Ada-Atoka|FtWorth & Rio Grande|KCM&O/KCM&O of Texas|Clinton & Oklahoma Western|New Mexico Central|
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|1410|5|6|8|0.1|0.1||
|555|0.1|0.8|(incl P&SF)|(incl P&SF)|(incl ATSF)||
|6250|0.2|(incl GC&SF)|||||
|1689|0||||||
|727|(merged)||||||

## More reading

- The Cosmopolitan (February 1893), _The Atchison Topeka and Santa Fe_. Retrieved May 10, 2005.
- Duke, Donald. _Fred Harvey, civilizer of the American Southwest_ (Pregel Press, 1995); The passenger trains stopped for meals at Fred Harvey restaurants.
- Dye, Victoria E. _All Aboard for Santa Fe: Railway Promotion of the Southwest, 1890s to 1930s_ (University of New Mexico Press, 2007).
- Frailey, Fred W. (1998). _Twilight of the Great Trains_, p. 108.  Waukesha, Wisconsin:  Kalmbach Publishing.  .
- Richard H. Frost, _The Railroad and the Pueblo Indians: The Impact of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa fe on the Pueblos of the Rio Grande, 1880-1930._ 2016, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
- Goen, Steve Allen (2000). _Santa Fe in the Lone Star State_
- Marshall, James Leslie. _Santa Fe: the railroad that built an empire_ (1945).
- Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University (2004), _Alumni Profiles: W. John Swartz_. Retrieved May 11, 2005.
- Santa Fe Railroad (1945), _Along Your Way_, Rand McNally, Chicago, Illinois.
- Santa Fe Railroad (November 29, 1942), _Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway System Time Tables_, Rand McNally and Company, Chicago, Illinois.
- Solomon, Brian. _Santa Fe Railway_ (Voyageur Press, 2003).
- Snell, Joseph W. and Don W. Wilson, "The Birth of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad," (Part One) _Kansas Historical Quarterly_ (1968) 34#2 pp 113–142. online
    - Snell, Joseph W. and Don W. Wilson, "The Birth of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad," (Part Two) _Kansas Historical Quarterly_ (1968) 34#3 pp 325–356 online

## Other websites

- "Along Your Way", 1946 edition
- Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe photos and other documents on Kansas Memory, the digital portal of the Kansas Historical Society (over 2800 AT&SF items)
- Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Company Records at the Kansas Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas
- Russell Crump's Santa Fe Archives — a very extensive set of resources for Santa Fe history.
- Santa Fe All-Time Steam Roster
- Santa Fe Preserved Locomotives
- Santa Fe Preserved Passenger Cars
- Santa Fe Railway Historical and Modeling Society official website
- "Diesel Locomotives" article from the May 18, 1947 issue of _Life Magazine_ featuring the Santa Fe fleet.
- James William Steele. _Rand, McNally & Co.'s new overland guide to the Pacific Coast_. Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co., 1888. Illustrated guide to the Santa Fe trip circa 1888.
- Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture – Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway
- Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fe Railroad Records at Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School
- Oklahoma Digital Maps: Digital Collections of Oklahoma and Indian Territory

## Infobox (rail)

- **railroad name**: Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
- **logo**: Atchison,_Topeka_and_Santa_Fe_Railway_Herald.png
- **logo size**: 130px
- **system map**: BNSF Map.png
- **map caption**: ATSF system (shown in blue) at the time
 of the BNSF merger
- **map size**: 300px
- **start year**: 1859
- **successor line**: BNSF Railway, Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway (later BNSF Railway)
- **hq city**: Chicago, Illinois