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| Bailey Yard, North Platte, NE |
MONDAY AUG. 13, 2012
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| O'Fallons, NE |
We spent the night in North Platte but our first mission on this
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| O'Fallons, NE |
Monday morning was to go touch the Mountain Time Zone a few miles to the west. This had nothing to do with railfanning but took us past O'Fallons where the Powder River traffic joins the main line. This is essentially the other end of the 3 track main.
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| O'Fallons, NE |
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| O'Fallons, NE |
On the way back we encountered a train sitting on the
embankment of a relatively new flyover track. As we got out to photograph it, it began to move.
This was not far west of the actual wye at O'Fallons.
Once the train was by we headed for Bailey Yard and the Golden Spike Tower in North Platte. This was the reason we headed into Nebraska in the first place. It was worth the effort. There is a nice museum at the foot of the tower and an elevator takes you to two observation decks - one open and one enclosed. From there you can see Bailey Yard, the largest rail yard in the world. There are some incredible statistics on the yard which I'll spare you here. Suffice it to say, the view was awesome.
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| Bailey Yard, North Platte, NE |
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| Bailey Yard, North Platte, NE |
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| Bailey Yard, North Platte, NE |
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| Bailey Yard, North Platte, NE |
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| CSX Power |
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| Slugs! |
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| Bailey Yard, North Platte, NE |
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| Bailey Yard, North Platte, NE |
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| Bailey Yard, North Platte, NE |
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| Bailey Yard, North Platte, NE |
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| Challenger |
Eventually it was time to leave Bailey
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| Centennial |
Yard. We moved across town to Cody Park where historical equipment was on display. There was a Challenger and a Centennial to look over. It was a small but excellent collection. I liked the unique UP flavor of it.
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| Cody Park, North Platte, NE |
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| Cody Park, North Platte, NE |
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| RPO Car |
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| Cody Park, North Platte, NE |
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| Cody Park, North Platte, NE |
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| Cody Park, North Platte, NE |
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| Three track mainline. Brady, NE |
When we finished here we grabbed some lunch and headed to the
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| Brady, NE - new pedestrian overpass |
overpass at Brady, just east of town. Here we could look down on the 3 track main. It turned out to be fairly busy too so my lunch was nearly cold when I got back to it.
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| Brady, NE - new pedestrian overpass |
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| Brady, NE - new pedestrian overpass |
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| Brady, NE - new pedestrian overpass |
The overpass was pretty good except for the chain link fence. When we arrived a local guy drove his riding mower over the whole ramp system, so you could tell it was fairly wide. Kids drove their bikes by us. Not a bad photo advantage for such empty land.
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| Ravenna, NE |
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| Ravenna, NE |
We were going to detour from US 30 to visit the BNSF Powder River line at Ravenna on the way back. This spot is a crew change point and features an office and extensive employee housing. I'd had great luck at this spot in the past, but not today. One wb train was sitting at the office and soon an eb stopped on the edge of town. But, that was it. We had a long way to go yet that day so we moved on. We stood on a new highway bridge, but the chain link was not friendly to cameras.
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| Ravenna, NE |
I took what shots I could of our one train before it left. This can be a hopping place. It just wasn't at this moment while we were here. We followed the line back to Grand Island and didn't really encounter much that we could photograph. We did see a couple of trains held up at the single track UP overpass. No noise on the scanner didn't help. We decided to move on. Time to head south for a while.
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| Hastings, NE |
Hastings was our next stop. This is on the CB&Q Denver line out of Lincoln. It has a reasonable amount of traffic and sees the Zephyr in the late at night and the wee hours of the morning. Across the street from the depot is this building proclaiming that Hastings is the birthplace of Kool-Aid. East of town was an extensive military ordinance storage facility that once had a web of track. Some of the bunkers now had trees on them.
We were headed for Manhattan, KS by way of Marysville, KS but our light was failing faster than we were making progress. We hit the grid of side roads to find the UP. "Short range sensors" kept showing tracks that were long gone. We headed for the town of Ong. The BN must have pulled the tracks and left the town to dry up and blow away. It looked abandoned but was not.
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| Davenport, NE (just south of Ong) |
Farther south we found the town of Davenport. Here is where we sat at a crossing and waited for the Marysville Sub to come to life. A local farmer stopped and asked if something was coming (common question along the UP).
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| Davenport, NE (just south of Ong) |
We had a friendly chat before it was time for him to go on. Eventually our wait was rewarded.
Our adventure did not end at Davenport, even though our cameras were finished for the day. We did get into the towns of Fairbury and Marysville where the scanner came to life. We were to make it to my friend Jim's place in Manhattan for the night so after Marysville it was time to call. We passed a lot of granger trackage that "short range sensors" showed but nothing was left. Out here the missing tracks were CB&Q, MoPac, Rock and UP. We also passed sections of Kansas' only narrow gauge, but I couldn't spot them.
In the morning we would be chasing UP 844 with Jim's guidance.
BC
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| Marysville Sub, Davenport, NE (just south of Ong) |
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