The yardmaster is the railroad employee in charge of the

rail yard A rail yard, railway yard, railroad yard (US) or simply yard, is a series of tracks in a rail network for storing, sorting, or loading and unloading rail vehicles and locomotives. Yards have many tracks in parallel for keeping rolling stock or u ...

. They manage and coordinate all activities in combining

rolling stock The term rolling stock in the rail transport industry refers to railway vehicles, including both powered and unpowered vehicles: for example, locomotives, freight and passenger cars (or coaches), and non-revenue cars. Passenger vehicles can ...

s into trains, and breaking down trains into individual railroad cars, and switching trains from track-to-track in the

. In the

United States of America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territo ...

, yardmasters are eligible to join the

Railroad Yardmasters of America The Railroad Yardmasters of America (RYA) was a union that represented yardmasters in the United States from 1912 until its merger with the United Transportation Union in 1985 which later became the SMART Union in 2014. Foundation The Railroad Y ...

Notable former yardmasters in the U.S.

* John Walker Barriger III (1899–1976) assistant yardmaster at the Pennsylvania Railroad * George B. Swan *

Al Alquist Alfred E. Alquist (August 2, 1908 – March 27, 2006) was a California politician. Biography Born in 1908 in Memphis, Tennessee, the son of a Swedish immigrant who worked for the railroads, Alquist was barely a teenager when he started carrying ...

at the Southern Pacific Railroad * Walter Ellsworth Bachman, Sr. (1879–1958) at the

Lehigh Valley Railroad The Lehigh Valley Railroad was a railroad built in the Northeastern United States to haul anthracite coal from the Coal Region in Pennsylvania. The railroad was authorized on April 21, 1846 for freight and transportation of passengers, goods, ...

External links

Yardmaster information
from

United Transportation Union The United Transportation Union (UTU) was a broad-based, transportation labor union that represented about 70,000 active and retired railroad, bus, mass transit, and airline workers in the United States. The UTU was headquartered in Cleveland, ...

References

Rail yards {{rail-transport-stub