North Platte Nebraska, Bailey Railroad Switching Yard - Excelsior Springs, Missouri, Watkins Mill State Park

Since our last post we have moved to Cody Park in North Platte, Nebraska, home to Bailey Yard, the world’s largest railroad classification yard. Personnel there sort, service and repair locomotives and cars headed all across North America.  We then moved on to Conestoga Lake State Park in Denton, Nebraska.  From their we moved to our present location, Watkins Woolen Mill State Park, home of the only completely original 1860's woolen mill in the country.  Watkins Woolen Mill State Park is located near Excelsior Springs, Missouri about 30 miles northeast of Kansas City.

Our Route

Cody Park in North Platte, NE was quite an interesting campground.  The park, located right on the North Platte River included a zoo right next to the campground, ball fields, playgrounds, an amusement park with carnival type rides and a train museum.  North Platte is a major railroad hub which provides much of the employment in the city so a lot of the attractions are railroad themed.

Buffalo At The Zoo

One lonely elk

This is Golden Spike Tower - the name is a reference to where the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads met  when building their railroad across the West (nothing to do with the Promontory Point,Utah Golden Spike where the East and West Transcontinental Railroads met)

View of the Bailey Yard from the tower - photos don't capture the immensity of the yard - it overs 2850 acres and is eight miles long.  The yard and all the train car sorting is controlled by computer - it is quite amazing to watch the individual cars being routed to the proper train utilizing gravity and computer speed control.  Around 14,000 cars pass through the yard each day and they sort around 3000 cars a day.  The yard has about 200 sets of tracks covering 315 miles if laid end to end.

This is the only train of this class in existence in the world - it is enormous - these photos are from the Cody Park Railroad Museum where we were staying.

The museum was mostly in the train but there were a few exhibits in the train station.

Donna in the engineer's seat on old 3877

Part of he museum inside the train

This car was a US Post Office car used for sorting mail - I assume for railroad employees

The exterior of the postal service car

Old 3977 and its tender

The following photos are from Watkins Woolen Mill State Park in Excelsior Springs, Missouri.  Watkins Woolen Mill is said to be the only completely original woolen mill from the mid 1800's that is still completely intact including all of its original machinery.  Most mills were either vandalized or the machines were salvaged for scrap to support the war effort during World War II.  It is believed  the remote location of the mill allowed it to survive intact.  The mill closed in 1898 and is pretty much the way it was when the doors closed.

The Visitor Center

Home of Waltus L. Watkins who built the mill.  We took a tour of the house and it too is much the way it was in the 1800's including much of the original furniture.

The summer kitchen (separate building)

The mill - just down from the house

The steam engine that ran the mill - this engine was salvaged by Watkins from a sunken steamboat on the Missouri River and powered the mill from 1860 to 1898

Views inside the mill - most everything is as it was in 1898

Our tour guide - bobbins of thread are new for demonstration purposes

Many of the employees signed this wall in 1898 when they were notified of the mill closing

This was the retail store where they sold yarn, blankets and fabric produced in the mill as well as flour and related products (Watkins also had a grist mill next to the woolen mill )