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
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