At 850 Jones St., a block from the famed Old Market in the railroad capital of Omaha––where westward construction of the transcontinental railroad commenced––resides the seemingly benign and innocuous Harriman Dispatch Center (or HDC). The HDC is the rail traffic control headquarters for the 160-year-old publicly traded United Pacific Railroad (ticker: UNP), aka “U.P.”
Informally known as "The Bunker," the HDC monitors U.P. switches, tracks, and trains across America. Locals who have toured it tell me it’s quite compelling inside: massive screens, with over sixty attendants, monitoring a monumental swath of staggering infrastructure. The Harriman is considered cool enough to be listed in the database of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, one of the essential stops on the Monk tour of L.A. The Bunker is also a pivotal stop in the Crotty tour of Downtown O. Here’s a photo of what it looks like inside:
Like CIA and NSA data centers scattered around Reston, Virginia and beyond, online mentions of the HDC are rare and hard to find. Nevertheless, the low-key, below-the-radar, but mission-critical Harriman Dispatch Center became mired in controversy two years ago when a U.P. train backed into 75 parked train cars near the Salton Sea in my second home of Southern California, killing a conductor and engineer. Dispatch errors made at the Harriman mothership and failures of backup systems were blamed. Rust on the tracks also prevented the parked train cars from being electronically detected.
In the wake of the catastrophic East Palestine, Ohio train disaster, the U.P. crash likely added to public perception that the Biden Administration’s embattled Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, was more consumed with policing perceived historical injustices than keeping our nation’s rail network and those who live and work along it safe. As the Biden/Harris Administration fails to promptly, effectively, and generously respond to the Hurricane Helene disaster––which has affected miles of critical infrastructure––the confidence of voters in Democratic governing competence has again been shaken just a month out from the most pivotal U.S. election in decades.
The STRATCOM of Railroad Infrastructure: The Harriman Dispatch Center!