JeffPo's Great Northern Railway Lantern Page
Created: 11/05/18
Last update: 11/07/18
This Armspear lantern was used by the Great Northern Railway. The brim of the lid is embossed with the letters G.N. RY.
The red globe is cast with G.N. Ry.. The red globe means it was used as a stop signal. The fuel fount has the Armspear 1925 burner on it.
Great Northern Railway
Postcard photo of the Great Northern Railway's "Empire Builder" as it crosses the Minneapolis stone arch bridge.
The Great Northern Railway started in 1857. It was created by railroad entrepreneur James J. Hill and was born out of the Saint Paul & Pacific Railroad. The Great Northern was the only privately transcontinental railroad in U.S. history, and was the northernmost transcontinental railroad route in the U.S. It ran from Saint Paul, MN to Seattle, WA. The Great Northern was built in stages as it moved west. It promoted land development along the way, and used promotional incentives such as feed and seed donations to farmers getting started along the line. It had branches that ran to Superior, Wisconsin, and Butte, Montana, connecting with the iron mining fields of Minnesota and copper mines of Montana.
The Great Northern began large-scale shipment of ore to the steel mills
of the Midwest. At its height, Great Northern operated over 8,000 miles.
The logo of the railroad is a Rocky Mountain goat. It’s based on a goat used by
William Kenney, one of the railroad's presidents, to haul newspapers as a boy.
Postcard photo of the Great Northern Railway's "Empire
Builder" streamliner between Everett and Seattle, Washington. Circa 1963.
The Great Northern promoted Glacier National Park heavily as a tourist
attraction. It operated various passenger trains such as the Empire Builder,
their premier passenger train. The Great Northern also promoted
settlement along its lines in North Dakota and Montana. In 1931 the Great
Northern also developed the "Inside Gateway," a route to California that
rivaled the Southern Pacific Railroad's route between Oregon and
California.
In 1970 the Great Northern Railway merged with three other railroads to
form the Burlington Northern Railroad, which merged in 1996 with the
Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway to form the Burlington Northern and
Santa Fe Railway.