| Posted by Dan I. on September 18, 2020 | |
Wood River, Nebraska is located southwest of Grand Island off U.S. Highway 30 with the Union Pacific having parallel tracks in town. The trains fly through Wood River most of the time. Since the Union Pacific generally follows U.S.30 for several hundreds of miles in Nebraska, my wife, before she passed away in 1994, and I would drive U.S. 30 rather than Interstate 80 just so that we could see the scenery and watch the trains including the Nebraska Central. At times, we would pace a locomotive and have a horn blowing contest every now and again just for fun. My old 1977 Mack truck air horns versus Union Pacific locomotive air horns. They won every time. I believe the engineer or conductor had fun as well as he always waved afterwards. On the other end of the State, one place that we really enjoyed watching the Union Pacific trains go through town at a much slower pace was Ogallala, Nebraska especially on the west end of town where I would park my rig overnight near a grainery. If one were to follow the tracks in the picture, they would go through Ogallala eventually. I miss seeing the western part of the country along with the large and small railroads there such as the Nebraska Central. Since I just retired some months back, I doubt that I will ever see a lot of Western railroads again since I reside in upper East Tennessee. At least, I got the CSX KD Subdivision tracks directly behind my house. Even that has slowed down considerably since CSX went to this "precision railroading" mode. I think CSX has somewhat abandoned the KD Sub and are routing trains around mostly due to the steep terrain with help of pushers. Even the CSX railyard in Corbin, Kentucky looks vacant now. Lot of tracks but very few railcars or locomotives.
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