FRIENDS OF THE BURLINGTON NORTHERN RAILROAD

Books and Essays by Earl Currie on BN History

Mr. Earl Currie is railroad management consultant with 34 years of experience. Prior to his current position he was employed by the Burlington Northern, Burlington, Great Northern and other U.S. railroads. With this background in railroad management he has authored two books and two essays about his experiences.

Books

• Running a Railroad Right offers Mr. Currie's view on today's best practices in leadership, and in managing safety and service delivery. It also contains some ideas on operating methods, plans and leadership capability that will be needed in the future. Jerry R. Davis, past President of Union Pacific, has written a "foreword" to this book.

• It Gets in your Blood is a combination of experiences, values and job knowledge that Mr. Currie acquired during his career. These experiences are summarized into several sections of "Lessons Learned" while advancing "through the chairs" of mergers, deregulation, and management changes. This book relates a personal view of a dynamic business environment.

Railroad and management people at all levels of responsibility should enjoy and relate to the experiences and ideas brought out in Mr. Currie's work. They are typical of the situations most railroad people have experienced and enjoy talking over with others. This material could be used for leadership training and skill development for operating officers, and as case studies for training in how to work through different kinds of operating situations.

Essays

• BN-Frisco: A Tough Merger is an essay on the BN-Frisco merger is based on the experiences and evaluations of "those who were there" during the years of tumult, tension and progress that occurred on BN in the years following that merger. The essay contains about 90-pages of text and several photographs and drawings.

• Nebraska Division: Challenge and Reward, 1975-1977 is an essay centered around the challenges the Nebraska Division (designated the Lincoln Division before 1976) faced in the mid-1970's to upgrade its track, bridges and signal system, and its line capacity, to the standards required to handle the rapidly increasing tonnages of coal being mined in the Powder River Basin. To most railroad people of the 20th century, the work done on the Nebraska and Alliance divisions, and on the Chicago Region and the FW&D Railway, provided a unique and unprecedented opportunity for the people of BN. Completion of these major trackwork and capacity expansion projects built the foundation for the success BN experienced starting in the late 1970's, and that has continued on today's BNSF Railway.

Click here to purchase one or more of these works.