An incredible rail journey throught he Kansas City railyards and industrial districts

That was some wonderful photo's thanks for sharing.

Having lived most of my life in Kansas City, I'm familiar with all those places and a few more. There is an interesting fueling station on the north side of the Argentine yard you missed. I also didn't see any shots of the control tower, one of the few in the Midwest. Also, when you took shots of the "gorilla" building, if you had turned around you would have seen the old KCS interlocking tower, still there. It helped shunt trains into nearby Union Depot. South of all this is the old roundhouse, which has been restored and has a cool KCS heavyweight parked on the turntable. I still go to K.C. often to visit my folks there, and will be back the end of this month. Mostly, I'll be chasing the UP 3985 though.

Kent in SD

Kansas City is great railroad town!!

Last summer, as part of the NMRA Turkey Creek chapter's convention, we had an opportunity to tour the Argentine yard - you could spend hours and hours taking pictures, and never run out of subject matter. I came away in awe of the yard workers, as several times we could see a dozen trains in motion on adjoining tracks - many operated with remote control switchers, and the yard men and women in constant motion between them. It's been much commented on, I know, but I never cease to be astounded at how QUIET a moving line of cars is, and how easy it would be to be killed due to a lack of situational awareness. It was really cool of the BNSF to allow us to visit.

(BTW, the train master that gave us the tour dropped a tid bit of information that I haven't heard since, and I wonder if anyone here can confirm - he told us that it was no longer economical for importers to continue to return intermodal containers to the Far East

- instead, it would be cheaper to pay for new ones!! It's a commentary on the massive cost advantages of Chinese manufacturing, I guess, but it came up in the context of him talking about BNSF worries about the logistics of handling all the surplus containers - anybody else heard this?)

I'm lucky enough to see the BNSF Emporia sub from my window at work - I'll watch anywhere from 25 to 50 trains a day, moving both towards and out of the Argentine.

My house is about a block from the old Mopac Texas main, now all double track UP action. Non stop trains there, as well.

Also, Kansas City has done a great job in the physical restoration of our Union Station, - its cost (and the viability of the tenants) are a favorite partisan ranting topic, but the building and its interior are a railfan's dream. And, we've just heard that the extensive Railway Express Agency buildings that adjoin the station are also now slated for renovation, as part of a USPS project in the area.

If you love trains, come to Kansas City, you won't be disappointed.

Chris Kansas City

Anyone that drives the New Jersey Turnpike near the Port Newark facility can see acres and acres of idle containers, neatly piled a dozen high. I never thought about it as a cost-of-manufacturing thing, just all the manufactriing jobs and exports we've lost.

KC is a great train town. Some good train stores to. And odd balls decals.

It costs about $10K to manufacture a container overseas. Costs way more to ship the empties back, so the shippers just leave them here.

Kennedy

On 04 Jan 2004 19:43:11 GMT, Kennedy (no longer not on The Haggis!) found these unused words floating about:

Wonder what the'd sell them to 'customers' for ???

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Dear sirs, Excellent! That means we will all have houses to live in when there is no work to be found here. Cut some windows and hang pictures on the walls, and there you go. Container sweet container. Cordially yours, Gerard P.

Don't laugh, there's at least one planning group considering using old containers as part of a modular housing project. Containers would be upgraded and reinforced; each one would be a part of a bigger living unit.

There was a web site that had the details on how this would work, do not have the URL any longer. But, it was relatively recent, say before Thanksgiving....

Kennedy

Dunno, but a local construction project has a 40' Triphook container sitting off to one side where the guys are storing stuff in it. At work, we have a couple of containers sitting in the parking lot used to store construction materials and office equipment during some remodelling projects.

And, I've seen a couple of used container dealers just off the Ohio Turnpike; there's a big "rent me!" sign on some of them.

Kennedy

Back when SeaLand was a separate company, and they were moving to the 45' standard length, my brother bought six 40' containers for scrap value (IIRC $700 per).

What type of camera did you use?

Pentax Optio S

Enjoyed looking at your pics. KC is one of the great cities for railfanning. I constantly look around at what has come into the area. They even make a railfanning map for newbies in the area. Just a side note but hundreds of fans have poured out all along the 3985's route to see this beautiful locomotive. It doesn't appear that the public shares this forums concern over the UPs decision to license their logos. So much for protest. Jerry