Moving to Manhattan, Kansas - Railroading suggestions?

Hey all,

I'll be moving to Manhattan, Kansas on the first of July, for a few weeks at least. As yet, all I know about the area is what I've been told by my parents who went there to procure a house recently.

Having looked at the house by means of Google Earth, I have discovered that the house lies about 800 meters or so north of what appears to be a single-tracked railroad line that runs on the southern side of Manhattan itself. I've never lived this close to an active railroad line so suffice to say, my curiousity has been piqued. Would someone please be so kind as to tell me what's there railroad-wise and what there is to do? I'm looking forward to going railfanning there, however I don't really know anything about what runs there. As far as I'm aware Union Pacific is the owner and operator of the line, outside of that I don't know anything about local trains (and the locomotives used to pull them), timetables, radio frequencies etc.

Apropos, are there any definite regulations when it comes to railfanning along Union Pacific property, much less railfanning in general? I'm plenty familiar with the rules in Germany (stay at least 2 meters away from the tracks, do not use flash, do not trespass, do not do anything stupid et al.), but since I've never really gone railfanning in the U.S. before, I find I may need to do a bit of learning about the topic.

Any information, help, suggestions etc. would be greatly appreciated.

Viele Grüße,
Wile E. Coyote

I used to live near Manhattan, with in-laws (Or outlaws, depending on who you are talking of) that still live in the area. Union Pacific is failrly busy through there. Unit coal trains along with general freight. Sometimes the military base close by ships out tanks and equipment for deployment over the line so that may be an interesting sight to you too. As far as trespassing, a definate no-no.
Mike

Welcome to Kansas State I take it?

Manhattan is 40 minutes away from Topeka. BNSF has their Topeka Shops, maintenance home to the Executive passenger fleet and a bunch of high horsepower locomotives. Topeka is also the convergence of the old Kansas Pacific (KC-Denver) and the KC-Omaha link of the UP. Busy place.

In addition, Abilene is 25 minutes to the west. Abilene and Smoky Valley, a tourist RR, has restored to function a Baldwin Pacific from the ATSF, and runs it from Abilene to Enterprise on the old Rock Island trackage. Also, BNSF has grain drags running from Superior NE. In the 70s Abilene was a place to see the last stand of the ATSF F unit fleet.

Not a bad homebase for railfanning, Manhattan is.

This thread came in very helpful as my family is moving to the city early next year. We'll be coming from LA so I'm doing a lot of preparations as early as now. By the way, is this where I'll find the Greenpoint? Heard they have vast bike lanes over there.

Herrington, KS isn't too far away. That used to be a moderately hot spot back in the '80s.