Bailey Yard facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Bailey Yard
Railway classification (hump yard) and repair facilities
Bailey Yard lit at night
Location	North Platte, Nebraska USA
Owned by	Union Pacific
Construction
Structure type	at-grade

Bailey Yard is the biggest railroad yard in the world. It's like a giant sorting center for trains! Here, workers sort, fix, and get ready locomotives (the engines) and train cars. These trains are heading all over North America.

The Union Pacific Railroad (UP) owns and runs Bailey Yard. You can find it in North Platte, Nebraska. The yard is named after Edd H. Bailey, a past president of Union Pacific.

What is Bailey Yard?

Bailey Yard is located right between Denver and Omaha. It's huge, covering about 2,850 acres. That's like 2,150 football fields! The yard is over 8 miles (13 km) long. At its widest, it's about 2 miles (3.2 km) across.

How Big is the Yard?

This massive yard has 200 separate tracks. If you laid them all out, they would stretch for 315 miles (507 km)! There are also 985 switches and 766 turnouts. These help trains move from one track to another.

Union Pacific employs more than 2,600 people in North Platte. Most of these workers help run Bailey Yard every day.

How Trains are Sorted

About 139 trains and over 14,000 train cars pass through Bailey Yard daily. The yard sorts around 3,000 cars each day. It uses two special hills called "humps" to do this.

The eastbound hump is 34 feet (10 m) tall. The westbound hump is 20 feet (6 m) high. These humps help sort four cars every minute. The cars roll down into one of 114 "bowl" tracks. There are 49 tracks for westbound trains and 65 for eastbound trains. These bowl tracks help create new trains. These trains then travel to places all over North America. This includes the East, West, and Gulf coasts of the United States. They also go to the Canadian and Mexican borders.

Repair and Service Centers

Bailey Yard also has three centers for fueling and servicing locomotives. They handle over 8,500 locomotives each month. There's a repair shop for locomotives that can fix 750 engines monthly. A separate shop fixes train cars, handling almost 50 cars daily. This car repair shop replaces 10,000 pairs of wheels every year.

The yard uses a special detector to check wheels while trains are moving. This detector uses ultrasound technology. It's the only one like it in the world! Union Pacific also found a way to change wheels quickly. Four workers can now change a set of wheels in just 8 to 12 minutes. Before, it could take up to 12 days!

Locomotives can get serviced very fast, like a NASCAR pit stop. This special area is called a Run-Thru. Different types of skilled workers are there to help. They can service a locomotive in 45 minutes. They don't even have to unhook it from its train!

Because so many products move through Bailey Yard, Union Pacific calls it an "economic barometer of America." This means it shows how well the country's economy is doing.

History of Bailey Yard

North Platte was first planned as a railroad town. Chief engineer Grenville M. Dodge chose the spot. He picked it because there was good water nearby. The town got its first train in 1866. At first, it was known as "Hell on Wheels." Dodge then built big shops and winter homes for his crews. In 1867, main line train operations began through the town. The first yard was a "flat-switched yard" with 20 tracks. This means cars were moved by small engines, not by rolling down a hump.

Buffalo Bill Cody built his Scouts Rest Ranch near North Platte. This allowed him to move his Wild West Show easily. He could use trains or wagons to travel across the United States.

From 1941 to 1946, the North Platte Canteen was very famous. It served food and drinks to over six million service members. They stopped for 10 minutes as they traveled across the country during World War II. Passenger train service stopped in 1971 after 105 years.

North Platte became a "division point" for Union Pacific. This means trains are sorted here. Also, train crews change shifts, and equipment gets fixed. Bailey Yard was updated after World War II in 1948. It became a hump yard with 42 tracks. Another hump yard with 64 tracks was added in 1968. A diesel locomotive shop opened in 1971. A railroad car shop followed in 1974. In 1980, the old 1948 hump yard was replaced with a new 50-track yard.

In 1995, Bailey Yard was recognized in the Guinness Book of Records. It was named the largest rail yard in the world. It was also shown on the "Freight Trains" episode of Modern Marvels on The History Channel.