Maschen Marshalling Yard (german: Maschen Rangierbahnhof, abbreviated to ''Maschen Rbf'' or ''AM'' in the
official railway directory) near
Maschen
Maschen is a village in the municipality of Seevetal in Harburg district in the German state of Lower Saxony. It lies south of Hamburg on the northern edge of the Lüneburg Heath and within the commuter zone of the city of Hamburg. Maschen Marsh ...
south of
Hamburg
(male), (female) en, Hamburger(s),
Hamburgian(s)
, timezone1 = Central (CET)
, utc_offset1 = +1
, timezone1_DST = Central (CEST)
, utc_offset1_DST = +2
, postal ...
on the
Hanover–Hamburg railway
The Hanover–Hamburg railway is one of the most important railway lines in Lower Saxony and Germany. It links the Lower Saxon state capital of Hanover with Hamburg, running through Celle, Uelzen and Lüneburg.
History
The main section of the ...
in Germany is the largest
marshalling yard
A classification yard (American and Canadian English (Canadian National Railway use)), marshalling yard (British, Hong Kong, Indian, Australian, and Canadian English (Canadian Pacific Railway use)) or shunting yard (Central Europe) is a railway ya ...
in Europe, its size only being exceeded worldwide by the
Bailey Yard
Bailey Yard is the world’s largest railroad classification yard. Employees sort, service and repair locomotives and cars headed all across North America. Owned and operated by the Union Pacific Railroad (UP), Bailey Yard is located in North Pl ...
in the US state of
Nebraska
Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwe ...
.
Layout and duties
The marshalling yard takes up an area of 280 hectares, has a length of 7,000 metres and a maximum width of 700 metres. When it opened it had a total track length of 300 kilometres and there were six
signal box
In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The ''IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing'' ...
es, 825
sets of points, 100
home
A home, or domicile, is a space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for one or many humans, and sometimes various companion animals. It is a fully or semi sheltered space and can have both interior and exterior aspects to it. H ...
, 115
distant and 688
shunting signals. As a two-sided shunting facility, Maschen has two train formation yards. The north-south system originally had a set of 48 departure sidings and a set of 16 reception sidings; the south-north system consisted of a set of 64 departure sidings and a set of 17 reception sidings. Both systems are supplemented by storage and marshalling sidings. In addition, there is an eight-road
main repair shop for the repair of
goods wagon
Goods wagons or freight wagons (North America: freight cars), also known as goods carriages, goods trucks, freight carriages or freight trucks, are unpowered railway vehicles that are used for the transportation of cargo. A variety of wagon type ...
s and an
engine shed
The motive power depot (MPD) or locomotive depot, or traction maintenance depot (TMD), is the place where locomotives are usually housed, repaired and maintained when not being used. They were originally known as "running sheds", "engine shed ...
for the maintenance of electric and diesel-driven
goods train locomotives with a two-road inspection hall and numerous open-air storage sidings.
Four signal boxes are responsible for the yard, two for each system. Two small signal boxes that had been built for the marshalling sidings were closed again in 1983.
In 2002 a central relief yard (''Dispostelle'') replaced the previous two yards—one for each direction.
In 2004 the goods wagon repair shop was upgraded into a combined shop (''Kombiwerk''), and is now responsible for the maintenance of locomotives as well as wagons.
![Maschen NS 010405](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Maschen_NS_010405.jpg)
In order to achieve the aspiration for a capacity of 11,000 goods wagons per day, Maschen was equipped from the beginning with the most modern shunting technology available in the 1970s. The composition of incoming goods trains was transmitted to Maschen before they arrived, so that the hitherto usual practice of handing over the trains in the reception sidings could be done away with. Using the data, train-splitting lists were created, these formed the working basis for the sequence control unit (''Ablaufsteuerrechner'' or ASR). The ASR controls the
shunters on the
hump yard
A classification yard (American and Canadian English (Canadian National Railway use)), marshalling yard (British, Hong Kong, Indian, Australian, and Canadian English (Canadian Pacific Railway use)) or shunting yard (Central Europe) is a railway ya ...
s by radio, giving them the shunting speeds, setting the points for the rolling goods wagons and regulating their speed with
retarders, 26 bar-type (''Balkengleisbremsen'') and 112 rubber retarders being available. 112 wagon transporters (''Beidrückanlagen'') move the loose wagons onwards within the sidings.
Maschen Marshalling Yard is responsible for the formation of both regional, national and also international goods trains. Importantly, it also acts as a hub for the transportation of export goods to, and imported goods from, the ports of Hamburg and
Bremerhaven
Bremerhaven (, , Low German: ''Bremerhoben'') is a city at the seaport of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, a state of the Federal Republic of Germany.
It forms a semi-enclave in the state of Lower Saxony and is located at the mouth of the Riv ...
, as well as traffic to and from
Scandinavia
Scandinavia; Sámi languages: /. ( ) is a subregion#Europe, subregion in Northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. In English usage, ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, ...
. Currently shunting operations are carried out by ''
DB Schenker Rail
DB Cargo (previously known as Railion and DB Schenker Rail) is an international transport and logistics company. It is responsible for all of the rail freight transport activities of the German railway company Deutsche Bahn (the DB Group) both ...
, Cargo Zentrum Hamburg''.
From 1977 to 2007 around 1.18 million trains with a total of 35.5 million wagons were assembled and dispatched from Maschen Marshalling Yard. In the 1980s 75 trains per day were formed in the north-south system and 125 in the south-north system. The highest number of wagons dispatched was 8,400 on 11 December 1985. At the beginning of the 1990s the figure was about 8,000; in 2009 it was 4,000 goods wagons. So Maschen has so far not reached the upper planning limit of 11,000 goods wagons per day; one of the reasons is that in the last 40 years there has been a considerable increase in the length of freight wagons.
Outlook
Because the 30-year-old facilities were in need of renovation, in 2009 work started on replacing and partially converting the yard.
This will also take account of the increasing significance of container traffic from the ports. In the course of renovation a secondary hump with shorter sorting and formation sidings (''Nachordnungsgleisen'') will be given up in favour of longer sorting sidings for the formation of long-distance trains. Reception and sorting sidings and their associated points will be replaced in sets and the hump technology will be upgraded to the latest state of the art as part of the renovation work on the whole yard. A total of 220 million euros is being invested in this work which should be completed by 2014.
References
Sources
* Deutsche Bundesbahn, Bundesbahndirektion Hamburg (ed.): ''Der Rangierbahnhof Maschen.'' Stalling, Oldenburg (Oldb.) 1975, no ISBN.
* Wolfgang Klee: ''Eisenbahnen in Hamburg''. Eisenbahn Journal special 5/97.
* ''Railion Deutschland AG'' (today
DB Schenker Rail
DB Cargo (previously known as Railion and DB Schenker Rail) is an international transport and logistics company. It is responsible for all of the rail freight transport activities of the German railway company Deutsche Bahn (the DB Group) both ...
Deutschland), Cargo Zentrum Hamburg-Maschen, Planung, Hesse, December 2007.
* Benno Wiesmüller, Dierk Lawrenz: ''Die Hamburger Rangier- und Güterbahnhöfe''. EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2009, .
External links
Track list and mapon the DB Netz site (pdf; 1,792 KB)
Maschen Marshalling Yardrailway fan site{{dead link, date=July 2015
Pictures from the Maschen Marshalling Yard
Transport infrastructure completed in 1975
Railway stations in Lower Saxony
Rail yards in Germany