ok so it's another gary adventure, albeit a short 3 day one, i like trains, lots of trains, all kinds of trains. so to that end i flew to denver friday 9/15, early morning, hopped into a rental car, and aided by the generous western speed limits drove 258 miles to north platte nebraska, WHY you might well ask, i'll tell and show you why. the golden spike tower, 8 stories tall, run by a non profit, which is populated by many union pacific retirees and current employees, overlooks bailey yard, the largest railroad car classification yard in the world, 8 miles east to west, and 1.5 miles across, classifying 4000 cars a day, 24/7/365. this is normally a b minus on the trip list, but they were having golden spike days, a 3 day celebration of all things UP and bailey yard. who could resist that. i could not. so stand by for a thread, because it was such a short trip i did not bring the laptop to do live daily posts, and due to some life and fire dept commitments this week, it will take a few days, but rest assured vicarious travelers, you will get the trip in full
ok let's start this off indoors, with a couple of shots from what is to me a somewhat nostalgic entry, the largest world war 2 canteen for servicemen shipping through was established, built and staffed by local north platte volunteers. there is no doubt in my mind that henry b faucon stopped here and had something to eat, perhaps a doughnut, a cup of coffee, maybe a piece of pie and a free pack of cigarettes, in mid summer 1943, on the way to his war in the south pacific as a seaman 1st class in the united states navy
and some patriotic posters, perhaps seen by henry b in early 1946, on his way home to a home and parents he had not seen at all in almost 3 years, scarred both physically and mentally, a survivor of a close kamikaze attack that did kill a handful of shipmates, something he was always very reluctant to talk about and why i am in this edge of the high plains, almost the start of the corn belt ranching and agricultural area of western nebraska, the golden spike tower overlooking this, now this is just a section of yard, looking west from the tower, on the left is the edge of the huge diesel repair shop, many crafts work there, servicing and repairing everything including changing out prime movers on union pacifics roughly 7500 locomotives, moving to the right is the service pad area, where diesels are serviced, fueled, oil and water checked, sand added and then eventually the yard trim crew moves them out to the made up trains on the departure tracks, eastbound departure leads are behind me in this photo, almost in the center is a tower shaped building 5 stories tall, that is the yard superintendent and some yardmasters offices, there are 5 yardmasters working per shift, 1 for each hump, 1 for engine service, 1 for trim crew and 1 for overall shift supervision, there is a train master for the road crews in a separate building, moving more to the right are the eastbound classification tracks, called the bowl tracks in railspeak, and behind behind them almost dead center is a smaller tower on a hill, that is the eastbound hump,bailey is a double hump yard, cars are pushed up to the top of the hill by a pair of remote control yard switchers, controlled by the man on the ground using a belt pack, he is the one pulling the pin to cut 1-3 cars loose, they roll down the hill and magnetic retarders control the speed and the computer in that small tower lines the switches to send the cars onto the right train for the next destination. to the right of that are some diesel fuel tanks, bailey yard is one of the largest purchasers of diesel fuel in the world, and at the lower edge of the tanks are a couple of engines being moved to the diesel shop via a track that goes under the hump and allows engines and cars to be moved from either east or west side operations to the other side. i will have much more in depth yard photos later on from saturdays tour of the yard via motor coach, with the vice president of terminal operations acting as our tour guide, those photos should make yard operations even more clear looking east, the building on the lower left is the yard dispatch center, safety operations, and where the road crews report and are vanned from to their various trains, above that and further east are assembled eastbounds on the east departure tracks, awaiting road power and then a crew to be moved out, these trains are all coupled together and have air lines hooked up to keep the brakes set, and the yard car crew has inspected each car for defects, it's not the fitbit job it used to be as they no longer usually walk the train, but inspect from the seat of an atv. plus much defect detection is done via trackside scanners, both in the yard and on the mainline. across from that you can see a string of power that was moved over there to be ready to be placed on this nights westbounds. and of course what photo would be complete without some growing corn.and to bring an idea of the size, these last 2 photos were taken with a 70-200 racked all the way out to the long end, on the A6500 with aps-c sensor so 350mm field of view stay tuned folks, much more to follow, it was an exhausting trip, for 3 days i saw a lot of things
up on the 8th floor, which is the enclosed viewing area, there are some nice tables to sit at, and some nice display cases, including a nice ho scale model of the diesel shop and a nice dining car china display, unfortunately we now have 2 generations raised not even for the most part knowing about comfortable train travel, let alone any idea just how good the meals were in the high speed top tier name trains, just the thought of some santa fe french toast is making me hungry
so saturday morning i started in on a full day of golden spike tower and north platte events, union pacific even brought a short passenger trains to the show and were doing train rides of about 90 minutes in duration out to the east on the main line, this is one of the nicest maintained mainlines i have ever seen, 3 tracks, welded heavy rail, well ballasted, high speed turnouts, one of the smoothest rail lines i have ever ridden. i got on the standby line and managed a seat on the first train of the day, with shiny fresh paint sd40-2 rebuilds with the admiral cabs pos them at each end, not a bad way to start the day, but the 5 foot chain link right of way fence made it hard to get a decent photo followed by the model train show i have moved to cody park now, site of much of the spike festivities, and the up retirees/family picnic, which i could not crash as they were actually checking id at the gate what a huge magnificent steam engine, not much smaller than a big boy, very nicely cosmetically cared for
so next to, and slightly to the rear of the challenger is this beauty, a centennial diesel, 6000 horsepower, from 2 prime movers, only 25 were built between 1969 and 1971 and only one is still in service on up, mostly for publicity trains. they proved to be too maintenance heavy, used a huge amount of fuel and were eventually sidelined by a downturn to the economy, a handful were eventually rebuilt with more economical engines, but by 1985 they were just a memory, but it is huge the engineers seat, remarkably few controls and gauges for such a large powerful locomotive compare that with the engineers seat from the challenger and behind the challenger, a us railway post office car you can walk through, with some nice informative text/photo displays about railway clerks, for instance i did not know that most of them were armed, although i should have given no electronic transfer back then, so much money was moved either as cash or negotiable bonds, making postal cars a prime robbery target. for scott, a 40th anniversary commemorative mustang, part of a small car show at the park
there was no owner around to ask the question, was this the delivery van version or possibly the hearse version, as there was one of those at one time, smaller funeral homes would own one if the packard or cadillac custom mades were too expensive, looking through the back window was inconclusive this kind of stuff is important for maitaining good sponsor relations, the golden spike organizers gave a momento golden spike to each sponsor, the local radio station had theirs on display
so let's get on a motor coach bus, nice touch, not a school bus, with the vice president of terminal operations for bailey yard as our tour guide on the pa system, and let's get a pretty up close and personal tour of the world's largest rail classification yard, we start off entering the yard by crossing the lead tracks for the diesel shop, a facility we will get to later the person at the switch is part of the trim crew, that is a yard crew that assembles outbound trains, checks them to make sure all the connections are in place, moves the road power into position, and makes it all ready for the road crew to leave here we have eastbound trains, including one that has the road power attached, which probably means it's soon departing, these are called ladder tracks which funnel down behind me into the departure leads, which further move through switches joining the 3 track mainline heading east, which are off to my right. cars rolling down the hump, moving by computer run switches into the bowl tracks to join into newly made up trains, when all goes well, which it really usually does, magnetic retarders slow the car down based on its weight and destination so that it joins the back of cars already on the bowl track just hard enough to set the knuckle coupler, not hard enough to have derailments or car/cargo damage. thus you see DO NOT HUMP on some kinds of passing railcars in trains, not a dog reference. the computer gets it's information from rifd transmitters on the sides of the cars now, being read by trackside scanners, several sets of them on the east and west sides of bailey, up to as much as 25 miles away, so when that train reaches bailey it's been scanned, and that has all been compared and verified to the original manifest sent from the yard that last made up that train i never did get a clear shot of him, but hidden by the smaller tower there is a yard crew person pulling the pins to uncouple the cars, the brake air hoses then breakaway, controlling the yard engines pushing this train up the hump with a belt pack radio controller, much like what one would use on an rc model or perhaps a drone, just with a lot more horsepower and tractive effort, the hump sets are 2-3 older road models, usually 2000 or so rated horsepower each. diesel servicing pads, kind of like a giant pit stop, although slower, fuel, sand, water and oil checked, bathroom supplied and hopefully cleaned. if it's a run-through the power stays on and once it's done the new road crew hops in and off it goes, the daily ups train and the 3 x weekly salad shooter from the california produced valleys with west coast fruit cars may be here as little as 20 minutes, the company is paid a big premium for these to be the hottest trains on the line there is even a flyover track to allow engines and cars to be moved from one side of the yard across to the other some of the runthroughs do not even need servicing and pause here just long enough to change crews coal movements are way down, but a lot of powder river basin coal from wyoming still gets moved through bailey, on it's way to either domestic power plants or to the east coast export piers. enough so that the coal trains have their own servicing and engine change area, coal moves in unit trains, 100-110 cars long, and they move through their own shop over here, where without losing the time to uncouple or take out a bad order car, it can be lifted in place, a bad wheel set pulled out, a new one slid under, and the unit train sent on it's way with minimal delay here is one end of that car house empty unit coal trains awaiting crews, crew districts for bailey are alliance yard in wyoming to the west, and omaha yard to the east if i remember correctly the yard crew for the coal train facility named this, their work building, on their own passing under the eastbound hump now on our way towards the diesel shop, i think this is the taller hump at 34 feet, the height is simply a reflection of how far the cars need to roll to the end of the furthest bowl track since they all roll at 2 miles an hour still not seeing the pin puller, and i forgot to mention, they work one train, and then have one train off, since this happens 24/7 in every kind of weather, including sleet and snow. the yardmasters tower, the overall yard superintendent has their office here along with some support staff and computer facilities some of the many locomotives awaiting or finished in the shop, up was one of the first large class 1 roads to standardize on a design, the sd70 for many years, reaping the benefits in less variety of parts to stock, less manuals to have online for shop craft to have to scroll through, less amounts of training for the various crafts to take, simplifying service and reducing service time as crafts became totally familiar with the parts they service. and modern diesel railroad locomotives have been state of the art plug in diagnostics for some time service bay entrances and all those road diesels get shoved around into and out of the shop line by this little hard working switcher and that concludes our yard tour, we stopped here on the way out to give folks a little break and a chance to see the tower if they had not already done so next post is something different, something quite unexpected, a nice little add on to this trip
we will continue with our day, still in north platte, but something not directly railroad related, although this location was probably chosen in part because of it's proximity to good rail connections, good access to stock for the shows and a lot of cowboys snd indians to audition and hire from. that's right, it is scouts rest ranch, the home of william "buffalo bill" cody, from 1886 to 1913. now i was wondering when i first hit town, how many places are trying to claim him, but after i got here and did a little marker reading, i realized that the place i had been to west of denver, was only his gravesite, a piece of land wanted for that purpose as he loved the view of denver from the hillside. and bill was the first one to have the name painted on the barn roof, as it still is today, today this is a nebraska state park site and the house, originally nine rooms, the back wing was added on after the turn of the century the front parlor one of bills show costumes, he was by all accounts a consumate showman, he would have made his mark on broadway were he alive in these times, he understood showmanship, timing and musical backgrounds, probably the best outside of barnum and bailey of his time the dining room, bill loved to entertain, and in lavish style, famous people of the time visited him regularly, teddy roosevelt, sitting bull, iron tail, pawnee bill, annie oakley, and many other notables, bill was famous worldwide it was the home of a well to do family, but not overly ornate, bill always intended it to be his retirement comfort the dress worn by arta cody, bill's daughter, at her formal presentation to the queen of england, the entire cody family was well traveled for the times bills saddle, note how deep the seat is, it would not do for the master of ceremony to fall out of his saddle and off his horse during the show bill had his fair share of family tragedy, loss of a couple of children young, to disease, etc there are several display cases of show memorabilia and artifacts some of bills show costumes the show had a band, no cd's in a player for that time, the cowboy band, led from 1883 to 1913 by cornet player, william sweeney, and they had ornate uniforms the kitchen a show poster, bill had an advance man, working all the press and poster placement ahead of the show and i concluded my visit by taking a break, sitting on a bench in the shade, watching this little brook running past me
saturday night, after a very good steak dinner i ended my day back in the hotel and in bed by 9pm, it had been a fairly long day with a lot of walking around. when i went to bed the weather forecast for the scotts bluff area was not good for the morning, so i figured i'd sleep in and start back to denver, maybe ride some branches of their light rail i have not been on. well i slept soundly and woke fully refreshed at 6:30 am, checked the weather, and it was much improved. so by 7:30 i was out the door and down the road, again helped by some fairly generous speed limits. this below is somewhere along the route 26 from ogallala to scotts bluff, nebraska is not all flat, not at all in the west clearing sky ahead, and this for me speaks for itself about why i could never, ever consider living here, i am too used to comforts of the city and close proximity to same, this is just too remote for me, landmarks to help guide the wagon trains courthouse rock in the distance chimney rock and the rock itself, from the visitor center and when they put the warning all over the place, in several languages, i take it serious
we have moved down the road, about 15 miles to the west and we are now at the 2nd major landmark for westward bound wagon trains, scotts bluff, this was where they made a turn for robideaux pass, at the top of which was a trading post, run by the robideaux family where they could buy supplies and make repairs before tackling the mountains of Wyoming. they had a couple of dioramas about the buffalo hunters and a life size fiberglass wagon and team of oxen after i toured the visitors center, and watched the little background video, i took this road up to the top here to enjoy these views and to the west, where mountain passes and bad weather awaited many a traveler south overlook, looking down onto the visitor center
so i have done the list item, so thanks to 2 railfan trackside saturday i learned of the existence of the colorado model railroad museum, and thanks to an early start, good weather, open roads and those western speed limits again, i was able to drive west and then south to greeley colorado, to this industrial part of town, nothing scenic about this, but inside, oh what joy, a 5500 square foot ho model railroad layout, multilevel, all kinds of dioramas scenes, this, this was just almost too cool for words, just be aware, this may be several posts over several days, it was that big, and there are some really humorous scenes along the line. so here is the outside, nothing real special just a brief scenery glimpse of the oregon,california & eastern railway company, our mythical railroad, and yes that is a working signal on the upper track, and they have positive train control, if you overrun red signal, you get your track power cutoff in the block you shouldn't be in, so your train comes to a halt and of course because california is in the name, and it's a sierra madre modeled road, there must be a handmade wooden snowshed, similar to the ones near donner pass and logging and wood products are the lifeblood of this road and the viewing areas have multiple levels, and that is a real caboose back there inside the building a worldwide name in wood products a little line side community, notice 5-0 shaking down the hippies in the park top center, and the lights were flashing on the police car interesting combined bridge styles here, the left portion resembles the famous keddie bridge in california, not sure what the right side is modeled after 1950's style passenger train coming over that bridge
here we have a thriving scrap metal business, including scrapping wrecked rail cars and today, in 2017, scrap metal still travels in low side gondolas i think this was some sort of crushed lime plant ok, ok, this was one of the absolute coolest features i ever saw on a model layout, fizzles fireworks factory suffers a fire, you press a large red button on the front of the display, the fire truck lights go on, and the fireman go into their losing effort to save fizzles fireworks that's right the building starts smoking from the roof collapse klamath falls station some line side industry some host railroad rolling stock and off to the side by the caboose, they have this little separate german made layout with a whole bunch of buttons for kids to press to make all these operating such as the carousel operate love this billboard
this was cool, it was in it's own separate room, an ho scale model of the superior and ishpeming loading dock, where the edmund fitzgerald loaded it's last cargo, and yes this is a detailed scale model of the fitzgerald taking on supplies " when suppertime came the old cook came on deck saying fellas it's too rough t' feed ya at seven pm a main hatchway caved in; he said fellas it's bin good t'know ya" HMS norfolk, a british cruiser of ww2, built by a sailor who served on her, emigrated after the war to the united states and became a world renowned ship model maker a general cargo ship of a type that would have lasted into post war back in the train room, some more trackside industry probably the highest volume commodity on this road is wood and wood products, lot's of stuff to turn there, right mike?? and sometimes a mine just plays out, the tracks get pulled and everything is abandoned to nature
working our way down the line, and that's trouble ahead it's a forest fire, ain't nobody got time for that. this was another one of those wondrous little action dioramas, press the red button and watch the forest service firefighting crew go to work i think they have it now, seems to be limited to one hot spot i would have the guys dump plenty more water on that passing by on the upper line
like all good successful railroad robber barons, the owner has a lakeside retreat, where he likes to go with his family, via private car, with a boxcar for the supplies for the week relaxing lakeside and of course there is a guest house besides then main cottage interestingly enough around the corner of the cove is an uninvited guest and i tried to capture a hint of this but was not able to, a photographer, doing the photograment with his family, and using a frash, which went off regularly better shot of one of those working signals, and a train overrun a signal while i was there and came to a stop, and one of the volunteers had to come out and move it back into the block it should have stopped in and reset the line nevada northern, a line i hope to shoot some day high and wide load hard times hit the gaming industry so mario took whatever work he could find working at the sawmill sawdust by the carload some of the home road power the lakeview theater, notice the future attraction i should have asked, but i wouldn't be surprised if this bridge actually was a working model and that concludes this adventure, they closed at 4pm, i exited to the car, and drove the 51 miles to aurora colorado, to señor rics, my favorite denver area mexican restaurant, where after another good meal, i drove the 13 miles to my hotel, checked in, returned the rental, and was blissfully in bed by 8:30 for my 5:00 am shuttle and 7:30 flight to new york the next day
john, i spent slightly over 1 1/2 hours inside and could easily have spent twice that, my house with 2 1/2 car garage is slightly under 2400 sq feet, this is 5500 sq feet of layout, jut to try to put some scale on this
