The Golden Spike and Bailey Rail Yard in North Platte, Nebraska
The Golden Spike Tower and Visitor Center allows visitors to get a bird's-eye view of Bailey Yard. It opened June 26, 2008. We took the elevator to the 7th-floor open-air observation deck, then went on up to the 8th floor.
Union Pacific’s Bailey Yard is the largest railroad classification yard in the world. Named in honor of former Union Pacific President Edd H. Bailey, the massive yard covers 2,850 acres, reaching a total length of eight miles. The yard is located in the midst of key east-west and north-south corridors, on the busiest freight rail line in America, making it a critical component of Union Pacific’s rail network.
Bailey Yard has 17 receiving and 16 departure tracks handling 14,000 rail cars every 24 hours. 3,000 cars 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 feet for those heading west, the hump yards allow four cars a minute to roll gently into any of 114 “bowl” tracks. Here they become part of trains headed for destinations in the East, West and Gulf Coasts of America, as well as the Canadian and Mexican borders. An average of 139 trains per day are largely comprised of raw and finished goods, such as automobiles, coal, grain, corn, sugar, chemicals, and steel along with consumer goods, including electronics, apparel and other retail products.
Motto of Bailey Yard: More Trains Than You Can Keep Track Of!
This was our last excursion of the day. Afterwards, we ate at Penny's Diner.
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