7-3-2023 North Platte, NE

Fort Cody is located right near the entrance to our camp but it’s just an amusement attraction, not the genuine article.  We decided to poke our heads in anyway.  There are displays, covered wagons, fort buildings and cute stuff to buy.  Then we learned that it was here that Buffalo Bill’s first Wild West Show was staged.  Bill was a colorful character.  He was born in 1846 in Iowa but decided to head west where the action was:  wagon trains, gold rushes and even an opportunity to ride for the Pony Express.  He became an Army scout and later a civilian scout for the Kansas Pacific Railroad, which was making its way west.  Known for his marksmanship, he proudly claimed to have killed 4,000+ buffalo to help feed the railroad workers, earning him the nickname, “Buffalo Bill.” 

 

He was employed by the Army as a civilian scout in 1868 and earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for his acts of valor in the Indian Wars.  Then, they took it away because they said he didn’t qualify for the medal.  It took until 1989 for the Army Record Corrections board to reinstate his medal.

 

Buffalo Bill was an expert frontiersman but he also had charisma and acting ability so the Army used him as a recruiting tool.  That’s where his Wild West Show comes in.  He recreated hunting expeditions and dramas for the average person, dignitaries, kings and queens.  Wild Bill Hickok, Annie Oakley and Mark Twain were some of his buddies.  Buffalo Bill became wildly successful and wealthy, investing in mines, hotels, coal, oil and establishing a newspaper, The Cody Enterprise, in Cody, WY.  He lived for a time in a mansion that he built in North Platte but of course, we couldn’t tour it because it was closed today.  He died in 1917 and is buried on Lookout Mountain in Colorado.

Buffalo Bill Cody

 

North Platte, Nebraska is more or less centrally located in the country and a logical place for train routes to intersect to organize loaded train cars delivering products to the nation.  It was the brain-child of Edd Bailey to create a railcar classification yard here in North Platte.  Edd started out at age 17 in the repair shop for Union Pacific and rose to blacksmith, brakeman, conductor and trainmaster.  Ultimately, his dedication and hard work put him in the position of President of Union Pacific.  The Bailey Yard here in North Platte is the largest railcar yard in the world, Edd’s dream realized.  He released the first rail car at the dedication in 1968.

View looking at the westbound bowl 
from Golden Spike observation tower

Edd Bailey, dreamer and
President of Union
Pacific Railroad

V

View looking at the eastbound bowl 
from Spike Tower
observation deck

Bailey Yard and the 
Golden Spike observation tower

Golden Spike Tower at the Bailey Yard was named simply to honor the ceremonial driving of the golden spike in Promontory, UT.  That spike joined the Central and Union Pacific railroads, creating the USA’s magnificent transcontinental railroad.  The observation deck on the spike-shaped tower provides a great view of the massive Bailey Yard which stretches east-west for 8 miles and north-south for 2 miles.  The arriving train cars are detached and sent down a “hump” into the “bowl” onto the correct track for their intended destination.  The westbound bowl is made up of 50 tracks.  The eastbound bowl is made up of 64 tracks.  We watched the engines move back and forth in the bowls creating the long trains from shorter sections.  One train can be pulled by two diesel electric engines, then 130 cars later (midway) 2-4 more engines, then 130 additional cars later, a final engine.  Weight-wise, one diesel engine weighs 220 tons.  One fully-loaded coal cars weighs 130 tons.  The “double train” that we watched in transit through the yard weighed a total of 70,680,000 pounds!  Each engine gets ½ mpg so that’s one monster fuel tank!  We spent hours talking to Dan, our guide on the observation deck and a retired Union Pacific engineer.  He explained and pointed out each function as we watched the machines moving slowly on the tracks below.

 

Pals Brewery was next on the agenda.  Five years ago when we found Pals, it was a fledgling enterprise established by my friends from Wisconsin.  Now, it is a big, busy affair and rated the #2 restaurant in North Platte!  Time for a designer beer and “the best pizza in town!”