Part Fifteen

“A good morning to sleep in.”

That’s what News8 weatherman Geoff Fox recommends some Friday nights during the 11pm News depending on what the weather is for Saturday morning.

But with all of the traveling I have been doing and writing this blog, this Saturday morning seems like the day to do just that…sleep in. And it was a good thing.

I leave Sidney, Nebraska at 10:30am MDT and start working my way east towards North Platte. And today is also the day where I will lose one hour of daytime due to the time zone change from Mountain Daylight Time to Central Daylight Time when I approach Sutherland later this afternoon.

After the pouring rain last night, it was nice to see the sun trying to peek out this morning but the sunlight was really competing with the thick clouds:

It was pretty much a crapshoot as to what the weather would do. But the Weather Channel said cloudy skies with a very small chance of showers. Considering my luck with the weather the past 2 weeks, I will take that for today.

After leaving Sidney, I make a stop in Logdepole and stop by the gazebo. My scanner comes to life and there is a westbound approaching. Over to the grade crossing nearby and around the bend comes a high speed double-stack container train.

Double-stack trains have special cars called well cars where you stack one shipping container on top of another. The well cars make up a single or 3 or 5 car articulated set. For this particular consist, it had 3 locomotives at the head end with a combined rating of over 13,000 horsepower.

Between what was individual well cars 126 and 127, 2 DPU (Distributed Power Unit) helpers, rated over 8,000 horsepower, were cut into the consist.

By the time the last of train went buy me, it had 210 individual well cars and somewhere in the vicinity of 375 containers.

At about 65 feet per well car to handle a maximum container length of 53 feet, and adding in the length of each locomotive, you have a combined train length of 14,000 feet or about 2.65 miles long!! Very impressive.

And at Chappell, the continuing march of corn to market with grains cars being loaded at the local grain elevator:

And while were at Chappell and as been mentioned before, what a difference 2 years make. From October 2008:

And from today:

Entering Colorado one more time:

I head to Julesburg to again enjoy a delicious sub from Julesburg General Store. And BTW, they’re known as “subs” out here. I asked the girl behind the counter for a grinder and she said, “What??” Be forewarned.

Just before I cross back into Nebraska, UP surprises me with a 154, yes, 154 car empty grain train heading west.

Only the lead locomotive was online as it passed by. And the usual DPU helper brings up the markers, with this one being an old Chicago Northwestern unit.

And as I enter Paxton, Nebraska:

They’re still piling up all of that corn. As I go thru Paxton, all traffic is being diverted to the south and then onto I-80 East. Seems they are rebuilding U.S. 30 between Paxton and Sutherland. And midway between Paxton and Sutherland, we cross into the Central Time Zone and bid ado to the Mountain Time Zone, which has hosted us since last Sunday afternoon.

I am in Sutherland about 10 minutes later and then start climbing south and heading to the Gerald Gentleman Power Plant. And an interesting thing about the power plant. See this bridge below on I-80:

There is another one like this on U.S. Route 30. They carry a rail line off of the South Morrill Sub so that coal trains can reach the Gentleman Power Plant. Delorme does not show these. In previous trips out here in ’01 and ’02, the bridges were still not on Delorme. It wasn’t until a few years ago when Google introduced Google Maps to the world and I then discovered the power plant and the rail spur.

And here is the plant:

And its distribution grid:

With the high tension power line towers going south:

East:

And west:

And here is the railroad spur into the plant grounds:

And 2 loaded coal trains waiting to deliver their loads.

And to give you an idea how much one train would approximately weigh, we take the info off of one coal car:

LD LMT 245300 (LoaD LiMiT of 245,300 pounds) maximum allowable weight of the car's load

LT WT 40700 (LighT WeighT of 40,700 pounds) weight of empty car; also called tare weight

So a load of coal would be 243,500 pounds or 121.75 tons. Add the tare weight of the car and you have a combined unit weight per car of 284,200 pounds or 142.10 tons.

So for your empties going west, based on the standard of 135 cars per consist, you have a consist weight of 5,494,500 pounds or 2,747.25 tons.

For your loads going east, again based on the standard of 135 cars per consist, you have a consist weight of 38,367,000 pounds or 19,183.5 tons of which 32,872,500 pounds or 16,436.25 tons is coal.

Quite impressive, eh??

And before we leave Sutherland, we see the tower for KPNE-TV9 and KPNE-FM 91.7 nearby:

Part of Nebraska Public Broadcasting, licensed to the city of North Platte.

Soon, we arrive at O’Fallons, the division point for the South Morrill Sub from the Power River Basin, and the Sidney Sub from Cheyenne. And the action keeps on rolling.

Coal loads going east from the Power River Basin: