Rose Ann and I made a two-day trip over to North Platte. I got a nice picture of the South Fork of the Platte River and thought I would share it with you. We drove over Thursday afternoon and came home Friday night. It is a 4-1/2 hours drive that is pretty boring. On the way over we got into a terrible storm for the last 20 minutes or so and could barely see the road. I got a speeding ticket in North Platte (35 in a 25 zone) and got another nose bleed. I got another one on the drive home and fortunately, Rose Ann was driving. Yikes. No problems today, thank goodness. Oh, I had time to be a tourist, but everything was closed until May 1st and the observation deck at the Bailey Railroad Yards will not be finished and open until this summer. North Platte has the world's largest railroad switching yard, switching over 15,000 cars a day. They tore down the old observation deck and the new one is over 9 stories tall and called "The Golden Spike."
6 comments:
What is causing the nose bleeds? You better get it checked out.
what in the world? The largest railroad switching yard in the WORLD?! In North Platte, NE?! That's crazy!
There are over 300 miles of track and they switch 15,000 cars a day and there are many unit trains of coal and containers and others daily. They are building a 9 stories high observation deck called "The Golden Spike" so you can view the yards. It is BIG and I wish I could have seen it.
Union Pacific Railroad's Bailey Yard in North Platte, Nebraska, is the largest railroad classification yard in the world. It was named in honor of former Union Pacific President Edd H. Bailey. If the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers were to play here, they'd have enough room for 2,800 football fields.
This massive yard covers 2,850 acres, reaching a total length of eight miles, well beyond the borders of North Platte, a community of 25,000 citizens. Put end-to-end, Bailey Yard's 315 miles of track would reach from North Platte in western Nebraska east past Omaha on the Iowa border along the Missouri River.
Every 24 hours, Bailey Yard handles 10,000 railroad cars. Of those, 3,000 are sorted daily in the yard's eastward and westward yards, nicknamed "hump" yards. Using a mound cresting 34 feet for eastbound trains and 20.1 feet for those heading west, these two hump yards allow four cars a minute to roll gently into any of 114 "bowl" tracks where they become part of trains headed for dozens of destinations. Together, these two yards have 18 receiving and 16 departure tracks.
I guess I got a little carried away with 15,000 cars daily. I cut and pasted what the Union Pacific says about the yard. The community college in North Platte has a major training program for diesel locomotive mechanics for the UP.
I had no idea! That's just huge. Must have been a sight to see. Too bad its such a long & boring drive out to North Platte. But it may be worth it when The Golden Spike is complete.
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