A rail yard, railway yard or railroad yard is the US term for a complex series
of railroad tracks for storing, sorting, or loading/unloading, railroad cars
and/or locomotives. Railroad yards have many tracks in parallel for keeping
rolling stock stored off the mainline, so that they do not obstruct the flow of
traffic. Railroad cars are moved around by specially designed yard switchers, a
type of locomotive. Cars in a railroad yard may be sorted by numerous
categories, including railroad company, loaded or unloaded, destination, car
type, or whether they need repairs. Railroad yards are normally built where
there is a need to store cars while they are not being loaded or unloaded, or are
waiting to be assembled into trains. Large yards may have a tower to control
operations. Many railway yards are located at
strategic points on a main line. Main line yards are often composed of an Up
yard and a Down yard, linked to the associated railroad direction. There are
different types of yards, and different parts within a yard, depending on how
they are built. Freight yards
For freight cars, the overall yard layout is typically designed around a
principal switching or shunting technique:
A hump yard has a constructed hill, over which freight cars are shoved by yard
locomotives, and then gravity is used to propel the cars to various sorting
tracks; A gravity yard is built on a natural
slope and relies less on locomotives; generally locomotives will control a
consist being sorted from uphill of the cars about to be sorted. They are
decoupled and let to accelerate into the classification equipment lower down.
A flat yard has no hump, and relies on locomotives for all car movements.
= Sorting yard basics= In the case of all classification or
sorting yards, human intelligence plays a primary role in setting a strategy for
the 'switching operations', the fewer times coupling operations need be made,
the less distance traveled, the faster the operation, the better the strategy
and the sooner the newly configured consist can be joined to its outbound
train. Switching yards, staging yards or
Shunting yards are most common generally graded to be flat yards where switch
engines and man power manually shuffle and maneuver cars from: a) train arrival
tracks, to a b) consist breakdown track, c) to an consist assembly track, thence
to d) departure tracks of the yard. A large sub-group of such yards are
known as Staging yards, which are yards serving an end destination that is also
a collection yard starting car groups for departure. These seemingly
incompatible tasks are because the operating or road company and its
locomotive drops off empties and picks up full cars waiting departure which
have been spotted and assembled by local switch engines. The long haul carrier
makes the round trip with a minimal turn around time, and the local switch engine
transfers empties to the loading yard when the industries output is ready to
be shipped. This activity is duplicated in a
Transfer yard, the difference being in the latter many or several businesses
and industries are serviced by the local switcher, which is part of the yard
equipment, and the industry pays a cargo transfer fee to the railroad or yard
operating company. In the staging yard, the locomotive is most likely operated
by industry; and ownership of the yard in both cases is a matter of business,
and could be any imaginable combination. Ownership and operation are quite often
a matter of leases and interests Hump yard and gravity yard tracks are
usually highly automated and designed for efficient break-down, sorting, and
recombining freight into consists, so are equipped with mechanical retarders
and scales which a computer or operator uses along with knowledge of the
gradient of the hump to calculate and control the speed of the cars as they
roll downhill to their destination tracks. These modern sorting and
classification systems are sophisticated enough to allow a first car to roll to a
stop near the end of its classification track, and by slowing the speed of
subsequent cars down the hump shorten the distance for the following series of
cars so they can bump and couple gently, without damaging one another. Since
overall throughput speed matters, many have small pneumatic, hydraulic or
spring driven braking retarders to adjust and slow speed both before and
after yard switch points. Along with car tracking and load tracking to
destination technologies such as RFID long trains can be broken down and
reconfigured in transfer yards or operations in remarkable time.
Yard nomenclature and components A large freight yard complex may include
the following components: Receiving yard, also called an arrival
yard, where locomotives are detached from freight cars, cars are inspected
for mechanical problems, and sent to a classification yard;
oft-called Switching yards or Switchyards or sorting yards—yards where
cars are sorted for various destinations and assembled into blocks have different
formal names in different cultural traditions:
Classification yard or Marshalling yard
Departure yard where car blocks are assembled into trains;
Car repair yard or Maintenance yard for freight cars;
Engine house to fuel and service locomotives.
Transfer yard is a yard where consists are dropped off or picked up as a group
by through service such as a Unit Train, but managed locally by local switching
service locomotives. Unit tracks may be reserved for Unit
trains, which carry a block of cars all of the same origin and destination, and
so as through traffic do not get sorted in a classification yard. Such consists
often stop in a freight yard for other purposes: inspection, engine servicing,
being switched into a longer consist and/or crew changes.
Freight yards may have multiple industries adjacent to them where
railroad cars are loaded or unloaded and then stored before they move on to their
new destination. Major freight yards in the U.S. include
the Bailey Yard in North Platte, Nebraska, operated by Union Pacific
Railroad; Conway Yard near Pittsburgh, operated by Norfolk Southern Railway;
and the Corwith Yards in Chicago, operated by BNSF Railway.
Major U.K. goods yards include those in Crewe, Reading and Bescot, near Walsall;
which are operated by DB Schenker and Freightliner.
Coach yards Coach yards are used for sorting,
storing and repairing passenger cars. These yards are located in metropolitan
areas near large stations or terminals. An example of a major U.S. coach yard is
Sunnyside Yard in New York City, operated by Amtrak. Those that are
principally used for storage, such as the West Side Yard in New York, are
called "layup yards" or "stabling yards."
Major U.K. coach stabling yards include those in Crewe and Longsight,
Manchester; which are operated by various regional train companies.
See also References
Further reading