How the American West was won – and skied

Posted by Steve Gates on Thu, 04/30/2009

Today, we learned about how rail operators move coal from the mines to the utilities.

At any one point, the train wheel touches the track in an area the size of a dime. Amazing. Keeping that area to such a small size helps reduce friction.
Steel wheels
This is a retired Union Pacific 6900 Centennial diesel locomotive. For more photos of our trip, visit tour.americaspower.org.
Union Pacific 6900
Centennial diesel locomotive

Railroad engineering is amazing. For instance, did you know that at any one point, the train wheel only touches the track in an area the size of a dime? Amazing. Keeping that area to such a small size helps reduce friction.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that the development of the American West relied on the race to build and develop a national railroad network. But here in Council Bluffs, it was hard to walk a single block without running into something that reminded us of how the West was settled.

Building the railroads led to other innovations, too. For example, to make its Sun Valley Resort in Idaho as attractive as possible, Union Pacific created a new way for skiers to get back to the top of the hill: the ski lift system. Of course, nowadays that technology is common at ski resorts around the world.

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History on Rails: Union Pacific Railroad Museum from Abraham Lincoln to today

Posted by Steve Gates on Fri, 04/24/2009

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

There have been incredible advances in railroad technology over the years, including remote-controlled switching locomotives. On the other hand, some things have remained the same for centuries. For instance, the width (gauge) of the rail track has remained 4 feet, 8.5 inches - the very same spacing used by imperial Roman chariots.

The museum itself is a beautiful Beaux Arts-style building. To learn more, visit tour.americaspower.org.
Union Pacific Railroad Museum
With the signing of the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln created Union Pacific Railroad and directed Union Pacific and Central Pacific to construct America's first trans-continental railroad from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Sacramento, Calif.
Union Pacific Railroad Museum

At the Union Pacific Railroad Museum, which houses one of the oldest corporate collections in the nation, we learned a few things that we probably should have remembered from our school days: Abraham Lincoln stood here in Council Bluffs - a town just across the Missouri River from Omaha, Neb. - and picked this site to be the eastern terminus of the transcontinental railroad.

With the signing of the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862, Lincoln created Union Pacific Railroad and directed Union Pacific and Central Pacific to construct America's first transcontinental railroad from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Sacramento, Calif.

 

 

 

 

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Our railroads keep America's power moving

Posted by Steve Gates on Fri, 04/24/2009

We know that coal comes from a mine. And we know that it generates about half of the electricity we use in this country. But what happens in between the mine and the electrical outlets on our walls?

For one thing, it must be transported from the mines to the utilities.

That's where our nation's network of railroads and barge operators come in.

The Factuality Tour visited the Omaha-Council Bluffs area to explore this part of the electricity "food chain."

This is where the action happens at Union Pacific's Harriman Dispatching Center. It is staffed 24 hours per day, 365 days per year to make sure the company's entire rail network is operating smoothly. The room is surrounded by state-of-the-art sound-absorbing panels and acoustic cloud wood ceilings, the same technologies found in modern concert halls.
Keeping everything on track

This is Union Pacific's computer-aided dispatching system, which coordinates traffic on the company's 32,000-mile network. The Harriman Dispatching Center looks modern on the inside, but it's actually an old freight house built in 1891.
The nerve center

Our first visit was to Union Pacific's computer-aided dispatching system in Omaha, which coordinates traffic on the company's 36,000-mile network, the largest in the world. The Harriman Dispatching Center looks modern on the inside, but it's actually an old freight house built in 1891.

It feels a bit like the set of a James Bond film. If you're unsure what goes on here, imagine a flight traffic control office... but for trains instead of airplanes. Here at Harriman, a staff of about 800 people work to ensure the safety of rail traffic. The huge displays provide dispatchers with customizable, real-time monitoring of the entire railroad network.

As you can see, giant 8-by-27-foot panels give up-to-the-minute weather conditions and continuous operation updates.

 

 

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Black Thunder Mine: Like nothing we've ever seen

Posted by Steve Gates on Fri, 04/24/2009

Wright, Wyo. – the site of the Black Thunder Mine – is not an easy place to get to. But it’s one of the world’s largest mines, so we made the trek.

You can fly into Gillette, which is about an hour away, but those flights are often canceled. We decided to drive from Denver, which is about six hours away (but runs through the town of Douglas, the self-proclaimed Home of the Jackalope!).

The land out here is beautiful but different than anywhere else we’ve been. There are rolling grasslands as far as the eye can see but (due to the semiarid climate) little in the way of tall vegetation.

Arch Coal's Black Thunder Mine in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming ranks as one of the biggest coal mines in the world. Each day, the mine fills 25 miles of railroad cars with coal and sends it out to the nation's electric utilities.Fully 8% of the coal used in the U.S. comes from here.
Vastness of the Black Thunder Coal Mine
Trucks like this one at Arch Coal's Black Thunder Mine in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming can hold up top 240 tons of coal. That coal is turned into electricity to power American homes and workplaces.
Huge trucks holds 240 tons of coal

When we arrived at the mine site, we couldn’t help but notice that everything about the Black Thunder Mine is enormous. The coal field continues in every direction as far as the horizon. The trucks, often carrying loads of more than 240 tons, have wheels that are taller than we are!

And as for Black Thunder’s dragline excavator, which is the biggest in the world… you’ll have to see the video to see for yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Electricity starts in places like this – Black Thunder Mine, Wyoming

Posted by Steve Gates on Fri, 04/24/2009

We set out to tell the story of electricity in America and visit the sites that are vital to our nation’s reliable supply of energy. This would be an impossible task without visiting the Powder River Basin. After all, this region supplies about 40 percent of the country’s coal. Indeed, Wyoming is America’s biggest coal-producing state.

We visited the Black Thunder Coal Mine, which all by itself provides 8 percent of America’s coal supply.

It's hard to convey how big a dragline bucket is until you... stand in it. This dragline is used to scoop up coal at Arch Coal's Black Thunder Mine in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. The coal is used to power America's electric utilities.
Two men in world's largest dragline bucket.
World's largest dragline bucket scoops coal out of Arch Coal's Back Thunder Mine in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. About 40% of the coal used in the U.S. comes from the Powder River Basin, and 8 percent of it from this mine.
World's largest dragline bucket in action.

Using the biggest dragline excavator on the planet, Black Thunder cranks out enough coal to load up 25 miles of railroad cars per day.

It’s a surface mine, just like all Powder River Basin mines. No one goes underground – all the action takes place right at the surface.

Once they extract the coal, the land goes through a “reclamation process,” by which the government requires that the mine return the land to the government in the same – or better – shape that they found it. For the most part, the reclaimed land is indistinguishable from the rest of the area. In fact, due to the efforts to attract wildlife, it is greener and more brimming with plants and animals than the surrounding area. Don’t believe us? See for yourself in the video.

 

 

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