The Southern Transcon is a railroad corridor between Southern California and Chicago, Illinois, and serves as a BNSF Railway main line made up of 11 rail lines between Southern California and Chicago. 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.