The Union Pacific Railroad Omaha Shops Facility was a

shop Shop or shopping refers to: Business and commerce * A casual word for a commercial establishment or for a place of business * Machine shop, a workshop for machining *"In the shop", referring to a car being at an automotive repair shop *A wood s ...

for the

train In rail transport, a train (from Old French , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and Passenger train, transport people or Rail freight transport, freight. Trains are typically pul ...

s of the

Union Pacific The Union Pacific Railroad , legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and often called simply Union Pacific, is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,300 locomotives over routes in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. Union Paci ...

located at North 9th and Webster in

Downtown Omaha Downtown Omaha is the central business, government and social core of the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area, U.S. state of Nebraska. The boundaries are Omaha, Nebraska, Omaha's 20th Street on the west to the Missouri River on the east and ...

. With the first

locomotive A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the Power (physics), motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, Motor coach (rail), motor ...

s arriving in 1865, it took until the 1950s for the facility to become the major overhaul and maintenance facility for the railroad. This lasted until 1988 when UP moved most of the operations out-of-state. Demolition began soon afterwards.

About

The shops were equipped for the complete overhaul and repair of all railroad equipment. The ''General Sherman'', also known as Engine Number 1, arrived from

St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...

in 1865. The

Great Flood of 1881 The Great Flood of 1881 refers to flooding events along the Missouri River during the spring of 1881. The flood began around Pierre, South Dakota and struck areas down river in Yankton, South Dakota, Omaha, Nebraska, Council Bluffs, Iowa, Nebraska ...

covered the entire facility with dirt, and later sand pumped from the Missouri River bed. In 1905 William R. McKeen, Jr. invented the track motorcar there, later forming the

McKeen Motor Car Company The McKeen Motor Car Company of Omaha, Nebraska, was a builder of internal combustion-engined railroad motor cars (railcars), constructing 152 between 1905 and 1917. Founded by William McKeen, the Union Pacific Railroad's Superintendent of Motiv ...

on the site at the insistence of UP head

E. H. Harriman Edward Henry Harriman (February 20, 1848 – September 9, 1909) was an American financier and railroad executive. Early life Harriman was born on February 20, 1848, in Hempstead, New York, the son of Orlando Harriman Sr., an Episcopal clergyman ...

Closure

In 1994 the

City of Omaha Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest city ...

asked the Union Pacific and several other properties on the Omaha Riverfront about voluntarily cleaning up their properties, as part of a greater riverfront revitalization effort. The

Environmental Protection Agency A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...

issued an Administrative Order on Consent to the UP in 2000, which required the railroad to investigate and clean up releases of hazardous wastes on the site. The Union Pacific facility then entered the Nebraska Voluntary Cleanup Program, effectively closing the facility forever.(2007
"Union Pacific/Omaha Convention [Qwest] Center"
Environmental Protection Agency. Retrieved 3/30/08. Today the site is the location of CenturyLink Center.

References

Properties of the Union Pacific Railroad Rail transportation in Nebraska 1865 establishments in Nebraska Territory Former buildings and structures in Omaha, Nebraska History of Downtown Omaha, Nebraska Railway workshops in the United States Defunct railway workshops {{US-rail-transport-stub

About

Closure

See also

References