In the early days of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad’s existence, it was often hard to tell that the Burlington Northern and the Santa Fe had merged. Such was the case on October 9, 1997 – the new railroad was about two years old at this time – when this westbound train was photographed at Basta, in the western part of Fullerton, California. An all Santa Fe consist of locomotives was on this train, and none had yet been renumbered: GP40X 3805, GP39-2 3414, a Dash 9-44CW and an SD45-2. Before much longer, however, the BNSF would begin the massive job of renumbering thousands of locomotives in order to create a unified roster.
