BNSF

FORT WORTH, Texas — BNSF Railway in March announced it has released four new mobile applications that enable customers to manage their BNSF shipments on their smart phones.

The National Transportation Safety Board has sent a team of investigators to investigate a rear end collision between two Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) trains. The collision occurred at 7 a.m. on April 17 in McPherson, Iowa. Early information indicates that a BNSF freight train collided with a standing BNSF maintenance train. Two BNSF employees were killed. Two locomotives and multiple cars derailed as a result of the accident. Michael Flannigan is serving as the Investigator-in-Charge for the 7-member team from the NTSB.

FORT WORTH, Texas — BNSF Railway Co. announced a planned 2011 capital commitment program of $3.5 billion. The largest component of the capital plan is spending $2 billion on BNSF’s core network and related assets. BNSF also said it plans to spend about $450 million to acquire 227 locomotives and approximately $350 million on freight car and other equipment acquisitions. The program also includes about $300 million for federally mandated positive train control (PTC) and $300 million for terminal, line and intermodal expansion and efficiency projects. BNSF’s expansion and efficiency projects will be primarily focused on the mid-continent and coal

WASHINGTON — The STB has dismissed a company’s claim BNSF Railway Co. is “double recovering revenue” from a fuel surcharge, but also denied the railroad’s motion to dismiss a second claim that is earning excessive profits from the surcharge.

FORT WORTH, Texas — BNSF is challenging what it termed “deliberate bias” in the Star Tribune newspaper’s cherry-picking unrepresentative and isolated incidents to imply an unsafe culture at the company.