The drawing tells about it, as does the sign we took a picture of. We stood on the open air 7th floor of the 8 story observation tower for the pictures. You can find more information on the yard and about the Union Pacific RR online. Tom read that the UP is the second largest landowner in America behind the Federal government. We watched cars going over the 2 humps. This is a busy town and I'm sure the 2600 employees at the yard really help the economy. They have lots of viaducts where the trains travel below and the cars on them. Being train buffs, it made us think again yesterday how a lot of Americans don't realize how many trains run daily and how many trucks they keep off the highways. Tomorrow we will go to a rail museum here that houses a huge steam engine and will post a picture.
RR cars as far as you can see
Left: view from another direction Right: RR cars clear to tree line, behind one of the employee parking lots
All of the front rows are engines! Bottom right picture is a view of more engines to the left of these
Drawing of the yard.
We watched the cars going
over 2 humps. This is where they
send each car (3000 per
day) onto the appropriate
track- this one to Omaha, this one to
Chicago, etc. How do they
keep it all straight? Obviously
there's a process-probably with computers now.
Tom's sooo funny, as you all know. He told me the humping is what produces more and more railcars.
Enlarge this to read the fine print - very interesting. What an operation!
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