Southern Transcon

Southern Transcon
BNSF ES44DC No. 7520 leads on the Southern Transcon in the Mojave Desert, California
Overview
Owner	BNSF Railway
Locale	Southwestern and Midwestern United States
Termini	Los Angeles, California Chicago, Illinois
Service
Type	Inter-city rail Freight rail
Operator(s)	BNSF Railway Amtrak
History
Completed	1908
Built by	Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway
Technical
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge

The Southern Transcon is a main line of BNSF Railway comprising 11 subdivisions between Southern California and Chicago, Illinois. Completed in its current alignment in 1908 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, when it opened the Belen Cutoff in New Mexico (going through eastern New Mexico, northwestern Texas, briefly part of western Oklahoma and to Kansas) and bypassed the steep grades of Raton Pass (which passes through northeastern New Mexico and southwestern Colorado), it now serves as a mostly double-tracked intermodal corridor.

The Transcon is one of the most heavily trafficked rail corridors in the western United States: as of 2006^[update], an average of almost 90 trains daily (over 100 trains on peak days) passed over the section between Belen and Clovis, New Mexico, with each train typically 6,000 to 8,000 feet (1,800 to 2,400 m) long.^[1]