July 25th: North Platte NE – Humboldt IA: no cycling

Autor: Tim Goodall

Today was the second day of our trek east to ride a stage of the RAGBRAI from Pocahontas to Emmetsburg. Before leaving North Platte we drove out of town to the see one of the largest railroad marshalling yards in the world – eight miles long and over a mile and a half wide called Bailey’s yard after the man that set it up and was later President of Union Pacific.

The visitor centre had a tower with a viewing platform about 80ft high and, under normal circumstances, would have been an excellent location to take some pictures and capture the scale of the operation but the weather decided otherwise. The clouds were down to the floor and visibility was much like a winter’s day in December. Nevertheless, there are a couple of foggy pictures below.

After leaving Nebraska we entered Iowa where the rain had finally stopped and we drove for about 4 hours through countryside covered either with fields of corn or soybean. Farm after farm, green field after green field and nothing else. I have no idea what people out here do for a social life. John doesn’t know either.

Eventually we arrived in Humboldt around 8pm at a Super 8 motel with nothing better than a Hardee’s for dinner. To cap it all our double bed room had been given away and we only have a king bed to share. We will no doubt both be balancing on the edges of the bed!!

Visitor Centre & tower
Locomotive maintenance sheds and large collection of engines
The yards where 10,000 wagons a day are sorted to build trains of up to 138 wagons for onward transportation. The yard has two humps for rolling wagons down into the targeted siding.
Hundreds of square miles of green.

96 Gedanken zu „July 25th: North Platte NE – Humboldt IA: no cycling“

  1. Philip Antworten

    Well hello sailor, hope you slept well! Still following your progress and pictures with interest and hope there are no more thunderstorms on the horizon for you.
    Philip and Linda

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