1880 Town

Since we were staying at the  Belvidere KOA about a half mile up the road, we decided that we'd visit the 1880 Town. I'm not sure we would have visited otherwise. There certainly wasn't much else to do in the area! 

The wide, open spaces of South Dakota's prairies are really growing on me. Sometimes you can turn a full circle and not see another structure. You'll see some fences, green fields, the road, and maybe some cows and a windmill or two. I find it very peaceful. Then the wind blows, and I'm ready for some trees to block its path, albeit distant trees after the tree falling on the bus episode.

1880 town is a collection of buildings from the 1860 to 1920 period. Quite a few are authentic, moved from other locations. Others were constructed from old buildings as a part of a movie set, which is how the place got started.  The collection of artifacts in the buildings is rather prolific.

You stroll through the buildings at your own pace, spending as much or little time as you like. You can rent costumes if you like. Imagine the photo of you coming down the stairs in the hotel in your period appropriate garb. We saw a couple of folks dressed up. 

It wasn't a bad way to spend an hour or two. 

Dances With Wolves movie props

Main Street

Bank and firehouse

Emporium

Saloon

Prairie church

Harold and the train

One room schoolhouse

Schoolhouse building

Where Are We Going Next?

World's Largest Rail Yard

One of must-see sights for us has been the world's largest rail yard. Located in North Platte, Nebraska, the Bailey Rail Yard (Union Pacific) handles over 10,000 railcars per day. Golden Spike Tower allows you to see part of the action. The yard is eight miles long and over one and a half miles wide in some stretches. It contains two hump yards, two sets of bowl tracks, and a locomotive repair shop.

There is a hump yard and a set of bowl tracks for both eastbound and westbound tracks. Railcars are pushed onto the elevated track (hump). From there, each railcar is sorted and sent to one of the bowl tracks. The cars in the bowl tracks are then coupled with trains heading to the appropriate destination. 

There are 64 bowl tracks headed east and 50 bowl tracks headed west. They're called bowl tracks because the ground is actually shaped like a bowl. The tracks end in an incline to prevent trains from getting out before they're ready. 

We left the railyard to stop by the Cody Park Railroad Museum. They have the only Challenger 3900 steam engine on public display as well as a 6900 series diesel locomotive. Not as big as the Big Boy in Cheyenne, Challenger is still pretty impressive. We liked that you could climb in it and touch a few things. Thankfully, they knew the train horn would be too hard to resist and had it disconnected. 

Pump Action

Diesel shop, Eastbound Hump Yard and Bowl

Check out the railyard factoids

Locomotives at the ready

Challenger 3900

Hands On

Challenger 3977

Engineer looks suspect to me

Where Are We Going Next?