Western Railroad Discussion > How busy is the UP east of North Platte

Today on my trip rail fanning from home to Duluth, MN for the N.P. Convention I stopped at North Platte on the U.P. on the bridge across the tracks at the very east end of the town and yard. Note that there is lots space to part on the road in this area and at the bridge at the west end of the yard. I was on the bridge from 11:46 to 12:58 and I saw and photographed seven trains. The trains were three eastbound with one train being a loaded coal train and four westbound with two of the trains being empty coal trains. This is about six trains an hour so at this rate the daily amount of trains for a Friday would be 144 trains in a 24 hour period. But of course the real number is a few less because sometimes you go an hour without seeing a train.

If you are following the tracks in this area east of Cheyenne using highway 30 there so many trains that if you tried to photograph all the daylight trains and did not want to stay in one place you wouldn't drive very far if you were trying to get some place.

I drove along the portion between Kearney and Schuyler a couple weeks ago for the eclipse. Driving east from 1600-1830 it was almost non stop (train every 5-15 min) meeting westbounds (roughly even mix of coal/intermodal/manifest). Closer to dusk the flow quickly dried up and it was closer to 40-50 min between seeing headlights

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I spent several days railfanning between Chicago and North Platte a couple of weeks ago and from what I saw I would say there are 70-80 trains a day between NP and Gibbon Junction. Images posted here...

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,4369136

Cheers
Rugby
UK

70 to 80 on a bad day maybe between North Platte and Gibbon. But based on this trip and other trips in the pass few years I would say that the average is more like 100 to 120 trains even with the coal traffic down. The coal traffic was 36 trains a day each way through Lusk, Wy. So even if the traffic has been cut in half that is still 18 trains a day each way. Is there anyone on this list that actually works for U.P. and has knowledge of how many trains each day of the week U.P. runs between North Platte and Gibbon?