A:
We ran your query by both Clark County and the City of North Las Vegas, and came up empty twice over. You wouldn’t want to quarry over there, as the Las Vegas area isn’t known for precious metal and its cement-like clay defies most attempts to dig to any substantial depth (for exceptions to the rule, check out the QoD Archives for 6/25/08, regarding the massive pits, visible more from the air than the street, off Spring Mountain Road and Durango Drive).
A North Las Vegas official, however, referred us to the United Pacific Railroad, for whom the location you asked about appears to serve as a tractor yard. What seems, as far as we can tell, to be an innocuous parking lot, has become increasingly steeped in mystery, however, and the deeper we've dug, the more caliche we've hit, so to speak. A Union Pacific representative gave us several thoroughly noncommittal quotes over the phone, then retracted the lot of them via subsequent email. So, until such time as LVA staffers (or readers) get a jones to drive up to Mesquite, the mystery of the empty Union Park lot is likely to remain unsolved.
Update 16 April 2013
Aha! Once again, a valiant and informed QoD faithful has come to the rescue, shedding some inside info. on a very plausible answer to today's conundrum -- thanks, Dan!
"Regarding your question about the Union Pacific Railroad ("UP") north of Las Vegas, I can perhaps shed a little light on the issue. I am a partner in a consulting firm that does extensive work in the railroad industry, and looking at publicly available UP track charts (track charts are detailed documents describing the infrastructure along each mile of a railroad's right of way), the location described is the site of UP's main intermodal and automotive ramp in Las Vegas. Intermodal shipments consists of trailer on flat car ("TOFC") and container on flat car ("COFC") traffic movements and are the trains one sees moving trailers and shipping containers. The automotive ramp is where cars and trucks are loaded into multi-level rail cars, and usually requires a large parking lot adjacent to the track to store the vehicles. The UP track charts also show several storage tracks, where UP can hold spare railcars for itself or customers as well as spare locomotive units, as well as tracks leading to industrial loading sites used to transload building materials.
"The reason that the UP may have been non-committal in its response is that after 9/11 the railroads have greatly tightened up their public statements about what, when and where they transport products. The railroads are especially concerned about the disclosure of the transportation of so-called "toxic by inhalation" products ("TIH") like chlorine and other chemicals. Railroad transportation is one of the safest ways to transport TIH products, much more so than by road transport, and the railroads work to move these products on routes that try to avoid large population areas. With that being said, the railroads have, out of an abundance of caution, avoided discussing the routing and placement of all traffic, including non-TIH shipments like intermodal and automotive movements. This is one reason why the UP was reluctant to provide any firm information on the site."
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