"I basically believe this country will prosper and more people will be moving more goods 10, 20, 30 years from now and the rails will benefit," Warren Buffett on CNBC Tuesday morning.

So Warren Buffett decides Berkshire Hathaway should buy Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., 160 years old, 32,000 miles of railroad tracks, 6,700 locomotives, 220,000 freight cars and the future of 4,000 Nebraska employees.

"Most of us buy Lionel trains," quipped Lincoln investment adviser Jim Pittenger.

After building a stake over two years, Buffett jumped all over the rest of the nation's second-longest railroad, at a price much closer to its multi-year high than its low, a deal that will continue to cause lots of comment locally, nationally, internationally.

Value investors like Buffett have a variety of metrics that drive them, Pittenger said in an email: brand names, low price-to-book value ratios, cash balances, repeat business.

Buffet, in particular, has a few value tenets that he adheres to when buying a company, as Pittenger described them:

Price should always incorporate a margin of error.

Look for business plans that are unavoidable ... people have to use them.

Be able to explain the business in one sentence.

Be able to understand the business and calculate intrinsic value easily.

The business must supply its own price and good management.

"Even more importantly, this business is growing," Pittenger said. "Warren knows that growth is a component of value and that paying a fair price for an excellent company is generally more profitable than paying a low price for a mediocre company.

"This is as high a premium as I can recall seeing him pay. One share of BNI was worth $75 yesterday. The whole company was worth $100 yesterday and Warren proved it today. This same price relationship probably applies to most of the Dow 30. But most companies don't fit through the aforementioned screens. I guess if a 10-year old can run a Lionel ... Buffett won't have any trouble running the Burlington."

Other investment comments on Berkshire Hathaway's acquisiton of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. :

"It is Warren being Warren, taking advantage of a market that is soft at a time when the possibility for competitive bids is relatively low," said Tom Russo, a partner at Gardner Russo & Gardner, which holds Berkshire shares. "He looks at this as a business that has advantages against other forms of transportation." - Bloomberg

"Its also a bet on the future of another country -China.

"China craves the coal and other raw materials that the U.S. produces. Those commodities fuel the great economic engine that is China, which is the factory to the world. U.S. coal and goods are sent via rail to Pacific ports and then shipped to China. With his round-out purchase of Burlington Northern, Buffett thinks China will continue to be strong." - Frank Ahrens, The Washington Post.

"Buffett also owns stakes in other railroads, (Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern) so it will be interesting to see if his move stirs any antitrust comments from Washington. Idiomatically, there is something profoundly rural in the Americana of Buffett's latest bet; much more so than Berkshire Hathaway's mainstay insurance business." - Chris Kaufman, Reuters.

"As my Reuters colleague John Kemp points out: 'Burlington's track and rights of way are perfectly positioned to benefit from a massive expansion of the country's coal-fired output in the next 20 years, coupled with carbon capture and store technology to curb the carbon-dioxide emissions.'

"He's talking about Burlington's track near the Powder-River Basin in Wyoming and Montana. PRB coal has lower sulfur content than Appalachian coal. To the extent we increase coal-fired power generation in the U.S., we're likely to do it on a 'clean' basis, giving PRB coal (and those who ship it) a competitive advantage. ...

"But again, given the high price he's paying, Buffett needs a lot of things to go right for this deal to generate meaningful returns for shareholders." -- Rolfe Winkler, Reuters

DALLAS -- Kendall Law Group, said it is investigating the proposed acquisition of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. by Berkshire Hathaway.

Former federal judge Joe Kendall said that the "investigation concerns whether the consideration to be paid to BNI shareholders is grossly unfair, inadequate, and substantially below the fair or inherent value of BNI." Also, the investigation will focus on whether certain members of BNI`s directors may have breached their fiduciary duties by not acting in BNI shareholders' best interests in connection with the sale process of BNI. -- Business Wire, owned by Berkshire Hathaway