Part Three

Dude!!....Sorry.

Day 3 begans with the above statement from the Hippy Dippy Weatherman. Seems he always knows where I am and he was shaking his head. What was a light breeze and 72 degrees on Sunday was now 50 degrees with winds out of the northeast at 11MPH with gusts up to 27 plus. It was cold going out for my morning walk. HD just looked at me, shrugs his shoulders and said, “Shit happens, Man”. I told him not to worry. Things will be warmer as the week goes on. HD gives me the peace sign and away he went.

I took a look at the Wunderground.Com website and it seems the rain is going to the northwest of me. But the Nebraska Panhandle had light snowfall going back into northeast Colorado. I wonder what will be the first ski area to open up on the Front Range.

So I began today with my rental car; a Volvo S60 TS 4-door sedan. Beautiful car. Runs nice. Good gas mileage. But for a little bit on Saturday, I was somewhat perplexed.

I noticed that when coming to a stop and then releasing the brakes, the car seemed to have a slight shutter, kinda like the rear disc brakes were sticking a bit. No worry. But then I arrived in Elkhorn to stop by St. Patrick’s Church, I needed to get my camera out. I popped the trunk, got the camera bag, and got back in to find the engine not running. Strange. I removed and put back in the electronic key, pressed the brake pedal and hit the START button. Car comes back to life.

After my visit with Father Tom, I still kept noticing this brake sticking thing. I look at the front dash display to see if I could find something.  I found a prompt called “My S60”. I delved thru the prompts and found an icon that looked like a copyright icon but it had a capital A inside the circle. Looking further, this circle A had something to do with a switch on the dash that matched the circle A. It appears that Volvo has added a feature found in hybrid cars. With the circle A lit up, the engine will shut off when you come to a stop. Release the brake and engine restarts just as you put your foot on the accelerator pedal. Now if you want to have a “normal” car, press off the Circle A button. Engine idles as one is used to. Problem solved. Now for my next magical trick……..

The ride from Columbus to Kearney was just spectacular on Sunday. Crystal blue horizon-to-horizon skies. Not a cloud anywhere. Abundant sunshine as Dr. Mel use to say. And of course, what would my trip be without what I came out here for…TRAINS!! To wit:

What you are looking at is double stack train, very colorful and also usually the longest trains run by the Union Pacific. Each one of those containers contains the gambit of merchandise used by many of us. Trains are usually maxed out to 140 well cars with 2 containers to each car. That is a train that is over 9000 feet long. Sometimes trailers are mixed into the consist. The locomotives are rated about 4400 horsepower each. If you go with the example of 280 containers with each of those containers being moved by a 550 horsepower tractor of a tractor trailer combination, that’s 154,000 combined horsepower to move all of those containers. Now look at the 4 locomotives with a total of 17,600 horsepower moving those containers. Quite the difference. And with steel wheels on the steel rails, you can move a ton of freight 425 miles on a gallon of diesel fuel. Very economic if you ask me. They are the fastest trains out there on the railroad at up to 70MPH. And you gotta love the colors!!

As the wind continues to blow at quite the clip, I figured it was time to be like a tourist and check a couple of sights.

The first one was The Archway; a unique museum about the early lives of the settlers in Nebraska from the 1840's to the 1960's. The uniqueness about the museum is that it spans across all 4 lanes of Interstate 80 at Kearney.

There are numerous displays that explain the goings-on of the settlers including the various Indian tribes of the area and the Union Pacific's Transcontinental Railroad, which will celebrate its 150th anniversary in May 2019.

 You will see info on the other changes in the United States including the drive-in movie theater and President Eisenhower's Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. When Eisenhower signed the act, $25 billion in funds were authorized for the building over 41,000 miles of roads which would become today's Interstate Highway System. Wikipedia.Org has a list of all of the Interstate highways in the U.S.

And speaking of I-80, on the east side of the Archway are 2 windows: one for adults and one for kids to out over the highway which passes under the Archway.

And at the window for the adults, you will find a speed gun tracking the westbound traffic.

The speed limit on this part of the highway is 75 MPH and just about anyone who approached the Archway was going at the posted speed.

For more information on The Archway, go to http://www.Archway.org/

After lunch at Runza Hamburgers, it was north across town to a mainstay of the outdoor community. That would be Cabela's, the "World's Foremost Outfitter".

Whether it's hunting, fishing or outdoor gear, Cabela's is the place.  All sorts of rods and reels for fishing, guns and rifles for hunting, and a huge assortment of clothing and jackets. Cabela's world headquarters are west of Kearney in Sidney, Nebraska, which includes a 250,000 foot warehouse that ships worldwide. I plan to go there on one of the legs of my trip. Check out their website at http://www.cabelas.com for more information and the story behind Cabela's.

So as the afternoon wears on, it is still quite blustery. But that doesn't stop me from railfanning. The comfort of my S60 is doing just fine.

And did you ever have one of those moments when you went somewhere and wished you had done a little research for that moment? Well for me, there has been this curved portion of the Transcontinental Railroad where the tracks go from traveling southwest, when coming from Omaha, to going northwest towards North Platte, and vice versa. Well, today I made it to that point.

If you go to Google Maps and look up Kearney, Nebraska, you will see the point to the west of downtown where the tracks make that turn. The only thing I found out was I could be at either end where the curve begins/ends but couldn’t go on the railroad service road to the south of the tracks. Still, I got the pictures that I wanted and saw a few trains along the way.

 One more item off of the list. Mission accomplished.

Anyway, Wednesday we head west to our next stop at the town of Cozad.  We'll check out a local AM radio broadcast giant. And, well, we'll see what crops up. No pun indented.

And I leave today with some train action from Sunday. An empty unit coal train going thru downtown Kearney from Omaha's main power plant to the coalfields of eastern Wyoming.  Please click on the link below:

https://youtu.be/Hs1Rj7BTV50

Thanks for following along.

I'm Philip J Zocco. On The Road. In Kearney, Nebraska.