Just googlemapping over North Platte, I understand it’s the largest yard in the world, on the map there seemed to be 3 billion cars spotted on the tracks, from above they ALL seemed to be grain cars, are they? ? And I would guess if anyone in the U.S. is looking for their grain cars they are probably in North Platte.
Couple of things…don’t assume that covered hoppers are grain cars! In Nebraska, particularly in classification yards, soda ash is a strong possibility,possibly stronger than “grain” cars.
Second, my experience doing that yesterday (“researching” your post) didn’t come to that conclusion. I saw a few stack trains, some manifest trains with Center-Beam flat cars (could you have mistaken those for covered hoppers, with their segmented lumber loads?), and lots and lots of coal cars. Empty coal gons could be differentiated from empty hopper cars.
North Platte is a huge yard, and perhaps some area does contain large numbers of grain hoppers. However, I think what you were looking at was an area that contains many tracks of coal gondolas. The car’s color is black rather than the off white color of many grain gondolas. The resolution of the Google picture is not quite good enough to be sure the cars aren’t roofed with hatches, but they don’t appear to have them.
Well if you ever ventured to North Platte NE & spend a few hours there you would see your conclusion is entirely incorrect [:)]
Well, went back to the maps and there are 2 distinct trackage areas, one is exclusivley open coal cars and another smaller area has roofed and hatched cars mostly white tops and various colors which may be grain, potash, chemicals, cement etc etc. Also went to Bing maps which gives a more detailed view, but seems to be a later date as there were more cars in the Google map, thought I might try and count them but soon decided it was a futile attempt. surely someone must live in North Platte and can add some fact to the volume and type of cars in the yards.
Again this must be a train watchers paradise, not only the volume of cars but the amount of locomotives. They do have an eight story tower open to the public for viewing the yards and it’s free.
No, it isn’t free. It was $7 per person and a great experience.
You see everything imaginable there. Trains passing thru are all kinds.
They have a diesel shop, fueling stations, 2 humps and lots of traffic - plus a lot of other things to see and do.
If you have a chance to go, there are comfortable seats to sit and watch inside the tower and volunteers that will visit with you and give you a wealth of information.
If you look up my YT site myrailvideos & then query North Platte you will find many, many different types of trains that pass thru there [:)]