PART ONE: Hersey, NE to Grande Island with the Iowa State Railroad Club

HERSEY, NE

At Hersey, a WB passes by the town's signature water tower and grain elevator.  This was the only segment of the "quadruple" track that we saw.

Soon, an Eastbound consist met a westbound manifest at Hersey.  The sun was quickly giving way to overcast skies in the morning.

NORTH PLATTE, NE

This is a view of the engine terminal at Bailey Yard. 

The engine house had over fifty engines sitting around.  Here is an overview of the shops area.

Some interesting facts about Bailey Yard:

-Every 24 hours, Bailey Yard handles 10,000 railroad cars.

-Bailey yard handles 130 daily trains to East, West, and Gulf coasts

-Classification sections of the yard consist of 114 sets of tracks.

-North Platte is home to 2,500 Union Pacific employees.

-The average number of locomotives serviced at North Platte per day is THREE HUNDRED!

-That is an average of 8,500 diesels per month!

-14,000,000 gallons of diesel fuel is used here per month.

We set up and watched some trains come and go at the east end of the yard.  Here, a Westbound overtakes a slower westbound

The first westbound had a CNW engine in the consist.  Here is CNW 8816 crossing the road that we were watching from.

After rounding the curve, this train is in the middle of a three-way meet with two other west bounds. 

At the same overpass, another westbound meets the eastbound shown above.  If you are ever in North Platte, I recommend this overpass on the east end of town.

We caught up to the eastbound pictured two lines ago, and paced the dash 8 (UP 9334) on the point for a few miles east of town on Hwy. 30. 

Not long after, another Westbound headlight loomed on the horizon.  Much to the pleasure of the four CNW fans along, another AC4400 was in the consist in yellow and green. President Paul Duncan catered to the requests of the CNW fans by doing a 180 and pacing her for a little while.

BRADY, NE and CENTRAL NEBRASKA

The overpass at Brady, the next town, provided for some nice views of flooded plains and, yes, lots of UP trains.  Here is one WB now, led by UP 4257.

We heard another eastbound while the above stack train was still going by, so it was off to the other side of the overpass to catch another train.  Note the end of the last one in the background.

We paced this coal train eastbound out of town along Hwy. 30.  Here is a nice shot of the second unit at speed, complete with the new "Building America" paint scheme.

Next we came to a very scenic spot along the tracks called "Buttermilk Curve" where we waited for two trains.  Here is the first of the two, with a UP, SP and BNSF unit in the consist.

Who says I take blurry photos?  Oh well, I was trying to get the entire atmosphere of Buttermilk Curve and not the train.  The results are what you see here.  Nonetheless, a very nice place to take pictures.

It was getting to be about "noon o'clock," and we get real hungry for "40's and Pizones," so we stopped to eat in the next town.  While there, we photographed UP 3265 leading this WB manifest train.

We continued east as soon as the air was purified from some of the atmospheric gasses that taint the inside of the club van after lunch, and headed to Cozad.  They had a nice overpass to get shots, but the funniest part was the UP's attempt to spell the town's name.  They evidently can't afford to paint the letter "z" and painted the station sign to read "CO2AD."  We learned from the UP that it is cost effective to substitute all z's with 2's.  But, hey, I honestly didn't think I'd learn anything in Nebraska, so it was definitely a plus.

Our next stop was in Overton NE, where the wind was really starting to pick up.  The nice ladies in the trailer courts were having a hard time keeping their clothes on the clothes lines.  Anyway, we caught another coal train here.  The loaded coal trains that we saw would completely engulf Hwy. 30 in a plume of coal dust.

Further east, we watched this classic meet of a WB stack train and an EB coal train.  We were reluctant to take too many photos of the coal trains, because the coal dust was getting in our hair, and even clinging to our skin.

The town of Kearney seemed to be a "clone" (pardon the pun) of Ames, IA.  With the town located along mileposts in the 180s, with an old depot, a college town, and even fake horns at all the railroad crossings, we thought we were home again.  Here, another UP coal train passes under a highway in Kearney.

GIBBON, NE

At Gibbon, NE, we spotted train number fifty for the day, led by this elaborate seven-unit consist.  I was a little late getting the shot, but here she is heading south on the Marysville Sub.

A westbound coal train awaits at the junction of the two main lines on the Marysville Sub.  Traffic at this spot was constant for the better part of an hour.

The last train of the day was probably the best train of the day.  At sunset, an EB at the junction was led by CNW 8820 and two BNSF units.  No UP power in the line-up could be found.

After dark, we carried on to Grand Island where we spent the night watching trains due to a tatoo convention being held at our hotel.  After watching a grain extra for the Nebraska Central, some manifests (one with CNW 8572), a drunken lady wander out in front of us, and some Nebraskan-hispanic "gangsters" trying to run pedestrians off the road, we called it a night.

DAY TWO: GRAND ISLAND TO AMES

East of Grand Island, we met a grain train led by "Building America" unit #4899.  Notice how they think they are "building America," yet it appears that they can't even "build" their own logo correctly!

The grain train was dropping off their consist to the Nebraska Central Railroad, which had a nice GeeP on display for us, idling on the ex-BN trackage.

FREMONT, NE

I held off taking photos of the random (and sometimes boring) UP trains until Fremont, where we caught this BNSF MoW ballast extra, complete with a caboose!

Paul C. had heard some chatter about CNW 8808 on the scanner, so we went to the UP yard to catch the train.  Here is the unit as it passed by after a crew change.

BACK IN IOWA...

At Missouri Valley, we caught up to another eastbound coal train led by another CNW engine.  This time it was CNW 8806, and here is a shot of us pacing it along Hwy. 30.  When the conductor saw us taking his photo, he was nice enough to flip us all the bird.  We were thinking about showing his bird how many moons were out that day, but decided against it.

We followed the train further east, but thankfully facing the engineer's side for the remainder of the trip.  Here is the 8806 crossing the Boyer River on the scenic truss bridge.

The final shot of 8806 came in Dennison from the overpass on the east side of town.  You can catch the train on a couple of very nice, sweeping curves here.

We caught up with this westbound manifest and paced it east of Grand Jct.  The second unit in the consist was CNW 6819.

Here's a look at my final shot of the trip, with CNW 6819 and three UP's (including two "building America" units) crossing over Kate Shelley Bridge.

All in all, Nebraska was a fun place, but, we learned that unless you are going to watch trains, it isn't recommended to travel west of Omaha!

 LAST WEEK'S UPDATE: Steamboat Rock, IA Intermodal Extra