Western Railroad Discussion > UP N Platte traffic counts

Just returned from trip to N Platte Nebraska. First time there since the GS Tower opened.
The Golden Spike Tower is absolutely wonderful. Spent half a day Saturday in the tower watching the yard operations.
Spent parts of 3 days trackside east and west of the yard logging trains, The train counts were thru the roof.
A UP Special Agent stopped by to check on us and he said train counts are down currently with the coal volumes down across the country.

We had 91 trains in 842 minutes parked trackside and logging the trains. Saw other trains while driving around the area and 4 while eating at the airport, and trains moving thru Bailey Yard from the tower., but they are not included in the count.
The 91 trains in 842 minutes is 6.49 trains per hour. That is a rate of 155.65 per 24 hour period.

Highly recommend going to North Platte, truly amazing

gmojim



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/28/15 09:47 by gmojim.

Glad you were able to enjoy North Platte, the Golden Spike Tower, the mighty UPRR and the flow of trains in what is truly the busiest portion of a railroad in the world.  I just returned from same area two weeks ago.  Our count was 54  trains in a 10 hour period or 600 minutes, resulting in an average of a train every 11.1 minutes.  Just out of curiousity, did you happen to record the range of car counts of the trains you recorded?  We did.  1 to 194 cars!  The 1 car train was a westbound "wing special" with one SD70 and one wing car.  The 194 car train was an eastbound manifest.  I am convinced the larger/longer manifest trains have cut the train count down from previous years, as well as the drop in coal volume.  Still an amazing operation to review!

Zephyr

Did not count cars.
91 trains

Coal 45
Intermodal 20
Manifest 16
Auto 5
Covered hopper 4
MW 2
Ethanol 1

gmojim​​​​​​​​​

Fred Frailey did an interesting blog this week about average coal trains loaded per day for week ending Aug 14th. It in states that UP loaded an average of 25.1 trains a day in the PRB that week. I believe UP use to load closer to 40 or more in a day several years ago.
Most of those will go east through North Platte.

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howeld Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Fred Frailey did an interesting blog this week
> about average coal trains loaded per day for week
> ending Aug 14th. It in states that UP loaded an
> average of 25.1 trains a day in the PRB that week.
> I believe UP use to load closer to 40 or more in
> a day several years ago.
> Most of those will go east through North Platte.

In 2012, UP loaded 28.5/day in the PRB.  In 2002, it was 32.7.

mapboy

I've just back from Nebraska, visited the triple tracks on Thurs/Fri- I logged 116 trains in 24 hours. I don't have details immediately to hand, but will submit a breakdown of train types as time permits. Good if you like Aces, the rarest visitor was CN9124, which is a former CNW C40-8. A unit which would have often travelled these rails.The 116 is still somewhat down from previous years, unsurprisingly because of the coal downturn. As I drove west on Tuesday, the KCSM 4527(AC4400CW) was another unusual catch, these units don't often stray north of the border.

Cheers, Dave

mapboy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In 2012, UP loaded 28.5/day in the PRB.  In 2002,
> it was 32.7.

And in 2008 it was 36.2 a day, which also coincided with BNSF's peak, 53.7 per day. Both have clearly dropped since then, but UP more precipitously. UP is averaging about 25 a day this year, down 11 in 7 years, compared to 48 a day this year on BNSF.

JG