Lincoln, NE: BNSF/CB&Q 1891 Havelock Shops and North Railyard

Havelock Shops: (Satellite)

North Railyard: (Satellite)

This is a car repair facility. Hobson Yard on the west side of town is the classification and locomotive servicing facility.

Beatrice Area Railroad Enthusiasts posted
Burlington & Missouri RR locomotives being manufactured in the Lincoln, NE Havelock Shops circa 1916. Photographer unknown.

 

Tim Starr posted
A work crew is building a boxcar in the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy shops at Havelock. A platform on one side enabled the workers to reach the top of the boxcars. (Newberry collection, 1948)

 

Tim Starr posted
A scene inside the car repair shop at Havelock NE (Chicago, Burlington & Quincy) in 1948. (Russell Lee photo)

Tim Starr posted
A scene on the car rebuilding line at the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy shops of Havelock (Lincoln) NE in 1948. (Russell Lee photo, Newberry Library collection)

Beatrice Area Railroad Enthusiasts posted
CB&Q turntable Lincoln/Havelock 1907

Please see nlcblogs for more historical photos including the above view after additional buildings were added on the right side in 1910. The photos are on an "official Nebraska government website" that has very restrictive usage rights.

1897 Lincoln Quad @ 125,000

They did a major expansion in 1910.

Beatrice Area Railroad Enthusiasts posted
CB&Q Havelock, NE Shops 1910

Beatrice Area Railroad Enthusiasts posted
CB&Q shops Havelock, NE 1911

There is no longer any trace of the turntable, and thus roundhouse, that we can see in this 1964 topo. I went a little further north with this excerpt to get all of the new route for US-6.

1964 Lincoln Quad @ 24,000 and 1897 Lincoln Quad @ 125,000

Tim Starr posted
Layout of the newly-renovated Chicago, Burlington & Quincy shops at Havelock NE in 1911. (American Engineer and Railroad Journal)

Loco Steve Flickr, 
CB&Q Locomotive 710 on display at Lincoln Station. NE.
One of the few remaining steam locomotives built at Burlington Railroad's Havelock Shops, Locomotive 710 was constructed in 1901 and rebuilt in 1928 with smaller drive wheels. The 78 ton locomotive has a 4-6-0 configuration. It was used first in passenger service, then for mixed freight loads from 1928-1950. Donated to the City of Lincoln in 1955, it was displayed at Pioneers Park until 1991, when it was repaired and relocated to Track 1, adjacent the Burlington Depot (Lincoln Station) in the Haymarket Landmark District.
[Static Display]

This backshop is now a car repair facility. "An area covering 200 acres east of Lincoln was offered to the railroad as a site for a new town and a maintenance and manufacturing facility." [trainweb]

They have an overhead gantry (lower-right corner) near the building and further out is a transfer table with two travelers.

3D Satellite

Taylor Bailey, Jul 2016

The wheel plant. They receive wheels in the lower left and ship wheel sets along the north side. (I wonder if the wheels come from McKees Rocks.)

Satellite

They receive and store a lot of wheels, but I could not find any axles.

They also assemble complete trucks.

Satellite

This street view is what allowed me to find the wheel plant. It is obviously a big storage yard for wheelsets.

Street View, Oct 2022

Third of many interior photos in JournalStar, FRANCIS GARDLER/Lincoln Journal Star
Jeremy Wozny uses a cutting torch to remove a handle from a railcar under repair at the BNSF Railway Havelock shop. The shop maintains 6,000 cars a year.

JournalStar, Journal Star file photo
An early 1900s view of the Burlington Railroad shops in Havelock.

They have now (2019) made over 3 million wheelsets.

bnsf
The mechanical shops were established in 1891, and the current wheel plant was opened in 1978.
"Today, the wheel shop is the last of its kind among all U.S. Class 1 railroads and produces between 400 and 500 wheel sets each day. While wheels are not forged at the shop, they are assembled, repaired and reworked to be used on railcars."

bnsf
The article brags about the amount of automation that they have introduced. "For example, the shop has an automated system where a crane loads the axles and measures them so that the wheel plate can be bored to the correct size. After that, the wheels are pressed on to the axle without human interaction. This process not only allows the data to be more precise and efficient, it’s made the entire operation even safer by limiting employees’ interactions with heavy wheels."

1:07 video @ 0:31