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

Steel wheels 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.