(The following story by Mark Young appeared on The North Platte Telegraph website on September 18.)
NORTH PLATTE, Neb. — The 1989 movie “Field of Dreams” immortalized the saying, “Build it and they will come.”
For train enthusiasts, the famous phrase could be slightly modified to say, “Create it and they will come.” And they are definitely coming, some from across country, others from different countries and others still who started arriving early in the week in anticipation of the second annual Rail Fest.
Robert Pfannenschmidt’s family hails from Nebraska, but he now proudly calls himself a New Yorker. Pfannenschmidt is also the definition of a train aficionado. He knows more about trains, Union Pacific trains in particular, than just about any Union Pacific employee.
While not employed by UP, Pfannenschmidt is a walking, talking Union Pacific marketing machine. Within three generations, his family has documented 95 percent of the Union Pacific engines that has ever eaten a shovel of coal or fired up on an electrical circuit.
Pfannenschmidt’s grandfather began the documentation process in 1901. His father and then Pfannenschmidt himself continued the tradition, and he travels the country visiting rail shows. He knows his trains and the companies that operate them. When it comes to Union Pacific, “they are the best,” he said.
“Union Pacific did everything the right way,” said Pfannenschmidt. “Union Pacific was a better railroad, had better tracks, better equipment and better employees.”
Pfannenschmidt said that through his travels, Union Pacific continues to maintain their equipment and the track lines that spread across the country better than any other railroad, which is why UP is one of the last great survivors of the Staggers Rail Act, which enacted reform for the railroad industry.
President Jimmy Carter signed the act into law in 1980, which allowed for more free market enterprise for the railroad companies, about 50 of them at the time. In a few short years, there were about eight left who survived the reform. Union Pacific, through their business practices that had already been in effect before the act, easily made the transition and maintained their top level within the industry.
Pfannenschmidt feels the rest of the industry is jealous of Union Pacific, something he feels can be proved in the fact that Union Pacific events such as Rail Fest are not generally supported by rail magazines and by the model railroad industry. An avid model railroader himself, Pfannenschmidt has more than 200 railroad cars and a 14-track rail line occupying a vast expanse of his basement.
“It’s very hard to get Union Pacific models,” he said.
His family, being from Nebraska, has made regular trips back to the Cornhusker State over the years, and Pfannenschmidt himself has been coming regularly for the past 10 years. He said something like Rail Fest is long overdue and wished people had more of an appreciation for not only Union Pacific, but for the company’s history and contributions to America.
“For me, it’s something to do as a retired man,” he said. “I like to watch the trains, wonder where they are going and what kind of cargo they are carrying. It’s amazing to me, but I don’t think people appreciate that this is the biggest railroad area in the country.”
He drove in from New York early this week in anticipation for Rail Fest, but would have been here as he is almost every year anyway taking pictures of Union Pacific rail cars. He hit one rail show on the way in, will stay for Rail Fest and hit another rail show on the way back to New York. It’s what he does.
“That’s America,” Pfannenschmidt said about the railroad. “That’s our lifeblood. That’s who we are and those tracks that spread across America are like the veins in our body carrying our blood.”