Golden Spike Tower

According to the brochure from the visitor’s center, Bailey Yard is “the world’s largest train yard.” I don’t find that hard to believe. Here’s a diagram of the tracks in the yard.

This is the locomotive repair shop. It’s about the size of three football fields and crews there can repair 750 engines a month.

Here’s a model of the interior of the repair shop.

To the right of the repair shop is the sand tower and the east bowl tracks. You can barely see the hump in the background.

Sand is dumped from the engine onto the track if an engine begins to lose traction. Cars are pushed over the hump and allowed to roll down into any one of the 64 tracks in the bowl according to where those cars are headed. The upturn at the far end of the bowl helps keep the cars from rolling too far.

Here we see the east end of the bowl with engines in front sitting on the ready track. These are the engines that will eventually pull out the east bound cars making trains for various destinations.

And this is the East Route Tower where a yardmaster controlls the makeup and departure of those trains.

This is Bailey Yard Headquarters where the superintendent, dispatchers, managers, and train crews gather to do or prepare for their work.

If you’d like to see all that for yourself but you don’t have a camera as good as Dave’s, don’t fret. You can watch it all on the live video feed from the yard.

Last, but not of the least importance to us, here is our home in the visitor center’s parking lot as seen from the tower.

Dave has just finished packing us up for another day of travel in our home so I must go now. I hope you enjoyed your tour of the Union Pacific’s Bailey Yard in North Platte, Nebraska.

TTYL,

Linda