Warren Buffett's investment company has bought more
railroad stocks this month,
reporting a purchase of 845,000 shares of Burlington
 Northern Santa Fe bni in a
filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late
Thursday.
The purchase raised the legendary investor's stake in the
railroad to 15%, just
short of 53 million shares.
Both classes of stock in Berkshire Hathaway brka/brkb
fell less than one-half percent
 Thursday before the filing was released. Berkshire Class
 A shares, which are the
 most expensive U.S. stock, lost $240 to close at $118,510.
 Berkshire Class B
 shares lost $1.75 to close at $3,948.25.
It was unclear whether Buffett himself or one of his more
than 60 subsidiary
 companies made the decision to buy. A Berkshire
spokeswoman said Friday
 morning that the company would make no comment.
Berkshire paid $67.5 million for the shares on Tuesday at
$79.85 apiece. The price
was 11 cents a share less than the price a Berkshire subsidiary
 paid for 4.3 million
shares last Thursday and 12 cents a share less than the 2.5
 million shares it bought
 last Friday. Last Monday, the company bought more than
3.3 million shares for
 $80 apiece.
The shares acquired last week were bought by Berkshire
 subsidiary National
Indemnity.
Buffett has said in the past that railroads have become an
 appealing investment
because they have a better competitive position today than
 in past years. Buffett
said he was slow to realize that railroads were a good
 investment because he
was prejudiced by the industry's past performance.
A May SEC filing revealed Berkshire owned 10.5 million
 shares of Union Pacific
 unp and nearly 6.4 million shares of Norfolk Southern nsc.
Berkshire omitted those investments from a quarterly summary
 of its stock holdings
 filed earlier this month because the SEC allowed the company
to keep them confidential,
so it's not clear how much Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern
stock Berkshire
currently owns.
Berkshire owns furniture, insurance, jewelry and candy companies,
 restaurants,
 natural gas and corporate jet firms and has major investments in
such companies
 as Coca-Cola ko and Wells Fargo wfc.