The UNL Tractor Testing Track

The Tractor Test Laboratory is unique to the University of Nebraska.  In the early days of tractors with internal combustion engines there were many unscrupulous vendors who sold faulty tractors to Nebraska farmers.  The state didn't like this and passed a law that all tractors sold in Nebraska had to be tested.  Thus the Tractor Test Lab.  The lab's reknown is such that it is now the "officially designated tractor testing station for the United States and tests tractors according to the codes of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)."  That just means the lab tests tractors from around the world and participates in tests done in other countries.

Please note that you are not supposed to ride your bike on the test track, lest you be decapitated by a renegade corn header.  Luckily campus security isn't as tight in Nebraska as it is in New York.  Sunday mornings are a fine time to take a spin, or so I am told.

Inexplicably next to the track is a corrugated metal shed.  That's no ordinary building!  It was built by the Behlen Manufacturing Co. of Columbus, Nebraska.  Behlen constructed the building in Nevada in 1955; 15,000 feet from where an atomic bomb was exploded.  The two Behlen buildings at the blast site survived the explosion.  The buildings of their competitors didn't.  Behlen then did a bang-up job, so to speak, in buildng fallout shelters.

That's it for the university.  I've got one more site to visit in Lincoln before moving south on the trip.

Comments

[judy]

My first thought was... that would be fun to ride your bike on it....

[Joe]

Sadly it is rather boring on a bicycle.

[judy]

Well, yes if you are 40+ it might be boring but what about being 9 or 11?

[Joe]

I was much younger in 1987!

[jeff]

That building glows in the dark!

[Joe]

That's the secret ingredient in the dairy store ice cream.