By the mid-1880s the Sandhills had become an important cattle-raising region, and the westward extension of the Burlington and Missouri Railroad through the Sandhills in 1877-1888 made ranching more profitable by improving access to eastern markets. By 1888 the Burlington had reached the growing town of Alliance, planned as a railroad junction and named by B & M engineer J. N. Paul. While Alliance served as the Burlington’s western terminus, material for building the Belmont Tunnel about 30 miles to the northwest, supplies for the Newcastle, Wyoming, coal mines, and equipment for grading camps on the line between Alliance and Newcastle were freighted overland from there. Locomotive Number 719, built at the Havelock, Nebraska, shops about 1903, spent most of its half century of service on the Burlington's Alliance Division, and late in its career it was used on the branch line from Sterling, Colorado, to Cheyenne, Wyoming. An 86-ton K-4 locomotive, a mainline passenger type built at Havelock and representative of the steam-power era of railroading, it was donated by C B & Q to the city of Alliance in 1962, refurbished by Burlington Northern volunteers, and placed on land donated to Alliance by John D. Nielsen.