Rolling through the world's largest rail yard

NORTH PLATTE, Neb.--If you want to know how the American economy is doing before everyone else does, a visit to this small town in western Nebraska might well give you some very valuable hints.
Why would such an otherwise non-descript town be a place to see how the country is doing? The answer lies in Union Pacific's 2,850-acre, eight-mile-wide Bailey Yard, the world's largest rail yard, where around 139 separate trains carrying 14,000 rail cars roll through every day. In a strong economy, the number of trains coming through rises. As the economy flattens out, so does the rail traffic. In all likelihood, the subtle ebbs and flows of traffic here happen well in advance of corresponding changes in formal economic indicators.

Bailey Yard is a key component in Union Pacific's national rail network due to North Platte's location central to the company's major north-south and east-west routes. Operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Bailey Yard sees huge quantities of everything from coal, grain, sugar, corn, chemicals, consumer goods, steel, and much more roll through every day. In short, it is a train lover's dream.
As part of Road Trip 2013, I drove west to North Platte for a first-hand look at train nirvana. From inside the yard, trains stretch off into the distance as far as the eye can see. In both directions. Coal cars by the hundreds sit idle on tracks, waiting for maintenance, service, locomotives, or simply the green-light to move forward, while hundreds of cars at a time get separated onto different tracks where they are united with other cars headed where they're going.
Union Pacific has had rail operations in North Platte since 1867, and over the decades since, those operations have gotten bigger and bigger. Bailey Yard was named after former UP president Edd Bailey, and was officially designated the world's largest rail yard by the Guinness Book of World Records in 1995.

Source : cnet.com