Burlington historian Richard C. Overton wrote: "The Burlington, with Budd in command, was virtually a training school for railway executives. Men like Fred Gurley, John Farrington, Fred Whitman, Harry Murphy, and E. Perlman, all of whom went on to head great railways, served varying terms on the Burlington while Budd was at its head. As James G. Lyne put it in "Railway Age" at the time of his retirement in 1949, the Burlington was 'principally the lengthened shadow of Ralph Budd.'"