Part Two

Did you ever have one of those days that just didn’t start right??

Well, on what is a milestone for me in my television career comes up flat…literally. Upon going to my car to load up and head to Kearney, what do I discover but a flat right rear tire. Seems the tire indicator on the dashboard of my Dodge Caliper was not an issue that would resolve itself according to the rental car agent at Eppley Field. For those of you who were with me 2 years ago, I had the same issue with my Dodge Avenger. But at that time, the indicator lit up early Monday morning and luckily for me, the tire in question kept its air supply and allowed me to find the great folks at Kearney Auto & Tire Service who helped me out. Looks like they will be getting some repeat business when I visit them Monday morning.

After changing out the flat with the mini-spare, I am westbound on U.S. 30, known in these parts as the Lincoln Highway. And along the way, the Union Pacific greets me with 3 unit trains:

An eastbound unit auto carrier train, 55 cars long, west of Clarks, Nebraska, full of Japanese and Korean imports:

An eastbound unit coal train, 130 cars long (complete with a rear end Distributed Power Unit), east of Central City, Nebraska with about 17,000 tons of Powder River Basin coal from Wyoming:

And a unit grain train, 105 cars long, west of Central City, Nebraska, full of corn kernels heading to a plant to be processed into either high fructose corn syrup (for your can of soda) or ethanol (for your car).

When you consider the weight of the commodities being shipped and how many tractor-trailer trucks it would take to move them let along the fuel they would use, suffice it to say that railroads are very efficient. CSX, one of the big railroads in the East, says they can move a ton of freight 426 miles on a gallon of fuel. I’d give anything to have a car that efficient, wouldn’t you??

After stopping off in Grand Island for lunch and picking up a few items at the gigantic Walmart Super Center, I head west and arrive at a very important point on the Transcontinental Railroad: milepost 175, known as Gibbon Junction in the town of Gibbon, Nebraska. 

Here the double main line of the Marysville Subdivision from Kansas City, Missouri and the double main line of the Council Bluffs Subdivision from Omaha, Nebraska, combine to become a triple track mainline running 111 miles west to the Bailey Classification Yard in North Platte. Check out this westbound empty unit coal train snaking through 2 sets of crossovers at 30 MPH:

This is the busiest freight line in the United States. Upwards of 120-140 freight trains a day traverse this line. For any railfan, this is the Mother Lode. With the wide vistas of the prairies, it makes a great place to chase trains. And the neat thing about it is that there are several areas of tangent track where you can literally set the cruise control on your car and pace these beasts. Pull up right along the locomotives and you will hear the finest engines ever made by General Motors and General Electric. As the late editor David P. Morgan of TRAINS Magazine once said, it is “Poetry in Motion”.

After about an hour, I head to downtown Kearney to another one of my train hotspots and settle in for a couple of days of viewing and relaxing. I’ll tell you more about Kearney tomorrow in Part Three. And a few other places I came across today.

And finally, today is a big day for me. In some circles, people may look at me and think I’m crazy. In other circles, it can be considered quite an accomplishment. And in this day and age, that rings so true.

Today, 10/10/10, October 10, 2010, is my 31^st anniversary with WTNH-TV, News8. I sometimes wonder why I got into this business, but I must say that I have met some people that I care never to see again. And at the same time, I have met some great people whom I consider my friends and are fun to work with. Thank you for your help when I needed it. Thank you for your camaraderie. Thank you for your friendship.

I’m Philip J Zocco. On The Road. In Kearney, Nebraska.