Bailey Yard

Bailey Yard is the world’s largest railroad classification yard. Personnel there sort, service and repair locomotives and cars headed all across North America. Owned and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad (UP), Bailey Yard is located in North Platte, Nebraska. The yard is named after former Union Pacific president Edd H. Bailey.

Facilities

Bailey Yard is halfway between Denver and Omaha. It covers a total expanse of 2,850 acres (4.45 sq mi; 11.5 km²) and is over 8 miles (13 km) in length and 2 miles (3.2 km) wide. The yard has 200 separate tracks totaling 315 miles (507 km) of track, 985 switches, 766 turnouts, and 17 receiving and 16 departure tracks. Union Pacific employs more than 2,600 people in North Platte, most of whom are responsible for the day-to-day operations of Bailey Yard.

An average of 139 trains and over 14,000 railroad cars pass through Bailey Yard every day, and the yard sorts approximately 3,000 cars daily using the yard’s two humps. The eastbound hump is a 34 feet (10 m)-tall mound and the westbound hump is 20 feet (6.1 m) high. These are used to sort four cars a minute into one of the 114 "bowl" tracks, 49 tracks for the westbound trains and 65 for eastbound. The bowl tracks are used to form trains headed for destinations across North America, including the East, West and Gulf coasts of the United States, and Canadian and Mexican borders.