Standing on a bridge at the Union Pacific railway’s Bailey Yard in North Platte, Nebraska, it is hard to recall that, until five years ago, North America’s rail industry was thought to be in long-term decline.
On a typical Friday at the yard – the world’s largest, at eight miles long by two miles wide – six trains are moving through the facility, which checks more than 15,000 passing railcars and about 600 locomotives every day. The trains range from traditional boxcars carrying general cargo, to trains carrying shipping containers stacked two-high and mile-and-a-half-long coal trains.
