SUNDAY AUG. 12, 2012
When we left KC on Sunday 8/12, we pretty much chose the fastest route to North Platte. That meant heading north to Nebraska City and west to I-80. All roads are fast in this part of the world so that was easy. We wanted to follow the UP transcontinental route from Grand Island to North Platte along US 30. This would take us by Gibbon Jct. where the line from KC comes in and forms a 3 track main to North Platte and O'Fallons. We passed many lines radiating out of KC and Omaha. Some were busy and some were long gone. The GPS "short range sensors" kept showing tracks that were no longer in place. The Rand McNalley Railroad Atlas was the best we could do this far west.
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| Grand Island, NE |
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| Grand Island, NE |
Once in Grand Island, NE we simply had to seek the point where the BNSF crosses the UP. This is a single track overpass that is roughly 10 years old now. The line used to cross at grade but with Powder River coal traffic on both lines, the bottlenecks would have been a disaster. BNSF is even now seeking to double track this overpass because it is becoming a bottleneck. The next day we would see two trains stacked up waiting to use it.
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| Grand Island, NE |
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| Grand Island, NE |
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| Grand Island, NE |
The UP was curiously quiet when we arrived but that didn't last forever. We got a steady stream of coal loads heading east on the BNSF while we waited. Eventually we even got one train passing over another. The lead units were not synchronized but the trailing DPU's were close enough to see each other.
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| Grand Island, NE |
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| Grand Island, NE |
The UP then provided a couple of westbounds, though the yard seemed active too, just out of sight. The coal train's trailing DPU had a door swinging in the breeze, and we played tag with that train most of the way to North Platte.
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| Grand Island, NE |
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| Grand Island, NE |
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| Grand Island, NE |
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| WB Gibbon Jct., NE |
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| EB DPU Gibbon Jct., NE |
Our next target west was Gibbon Jct. This is where the Marysville line from Kansas City joins the transcontinental line. Depending on your perspective, this is where the 3 track mainline begins or ends. Coal traffic has caused the UP to double track the Marysville Sub and add the 3rd track to the transcontinental line.
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| Gibbon Jct., NE |
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| KCS unit Gibbon Jct., NE |
We saw a continuous barrage of trains in the short time we sat at the crossing there. Something on every line. The westbounds we saw coming as we arrived from the east, all seemed to be held at the junction for a short time. SP and KCS made appearances. I think we stayed less than an hour.
Down the road to the west we ran into the city of Kearny to see what we could see. The original
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| Local power, Kearney, NE |
depot is now gone but UP has one of their yellow brick square offices near there. Down the tracks along a parkway we found some local power idling.
We didn't linger in Kearney and headed west. Here we encountered the curious town of Cozad. The depot was in an attractive little park now
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| The 100th Meridian - Cozad, NE |
and everything highlighted the fact that the 100th Meridian passes through here. In fact, there was a commemorative plaque for the ceremony when the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad reached Cozad. UP also provided a caboose to the park.
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| The 100th Meridian - Cozad, NE |
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| West of Gothenberg, NE |
Along the 3 track line we noticed that the small towns had elaborate, and new, pedestrian overpasses. They seemed to be of a common design. As it became apparent that these might be useful, we scoped one out for future use. When we passed the town of Gothenburg the sunlight looked like it might fail soon and it was time to find a crossing to watch the action from. We found a very isolated crossing as it turned out.
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| West of Gothenberg, NE |
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| West of Gothenberg, NE |
We had grabbed some Subway sandwiches in Cozad so it was time to eat too. We saw several trains and a meet while we parked at that isolated crossing. The sunset made for some spectacular lighting.
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| A couple of crossings west of Gothenberg, NE |
We ended the day pretty much as planned. We had passed grain elevators from tiny to unit train sized. We'd passed ammonia plant and ethanal plants. All manner of plains agribusiness. US 30 proved to be ideal for our travels. We were near enough to North Platte to call it a day and we had scoped out the overpass in Brady for our return. Now all we had to do was retire. One of my last shots turned out to be pretty good for someone who generally avoids the artsie-fartsie stuff
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| A couple of crossings west of Gothenberg, NE |
BC
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