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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 vehicle 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 b ...
s and locomotives. Yards have many tracks in parallel for keeping rolling stock or unused locomotives stored off the main line, so that they do not obstruct the flow of traffic. Cars or wagons are moved around by specially designed yard switchers (US) or shunters, a type of locomotive. Cars or wagons in a yard may be sorted by numerous categories, including railway company, loaded or unloaded, destination, car type, or whether they need repairs. Yards are normally built where there is a need to store rail vehicles 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 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 direction of travel. There are different types of yards, and different parts within a yard, depending on how they are built.


Freight yards

For
freight car A railroad car, railcar ( American and Canadian English), railway wagon, railway carriage, railway truck, railwagon, railcarriage or railtruck (British English and UIC), also called a train car, train wagon, train carriage or train truck, is ...
s, the overall yard layout is typically designed around a principal ''switching'' (US term) or ''shunting'' (UK) technique: * A flat yard has no hump, and relies on locomotives for all car movements. * 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 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;


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 to be made and 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 typically graded to be flat yards, where switch engines manually shuffle and maneuver cars from (a) train arrival tracks, to (b) to consist breakdown track, to (c) 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 (refinery, chemical company or coal mine personnel); 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 yards and gravity yards are usually highly automated and designed for the efficient break-down, sorting, and recombining of freight into consists, so they are equipped with mechanical retarders (external brakes) and scales that 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 (below, right) 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. File:Vaganyfek Ferencvaros.JPG, A hump classification type of yard. The camera is positioned near where cars are decoupled and begin to accelerate downhill past a scale. The speed regulation (retarder brakes and speed sensors) devices shown in the foreground adjust the car speed for the ''calculated soft-coupling on arrival'' along the sorting track for the consist it is being routed to join. File:Dowty-Retarder1.JPG, Smaller local hydraulic "
dowty retarders Sir George Herbert Dowty (27 March 1901 – 2 December 1975) was an English inventor and businessman. He founded Dowty Aviation in the 1930s producing aircraft components such as hydraulic systems, undercarriage units, and warning devices. Earl ...
" finesse the speed of a car being sorted as it approaches a switch or the new consists to which it is being joined.


Nomenclature and components

A large freight yard may include the following components: * Receiving yard, also called an arrival yard, where freight cars or wagons are detached from their locomotives, inspected for mechanical problems, and sent to a classification or marshalling yard. * Switching yards, switchyards, shunting yards or sorting yardsyards where cars are sorted for various destinations and assembled into blocks have different formal names in different cultural traditions: **
Classification 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 ...
(US and by
Canadian National Railway The Canadian National Railway Company (french: Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux du Canada) is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN i ...
in Canada) or ** Marshalling yard (UK and
Canadian Pacific Railway The Canadian Pacific Railway (french: Chemin de fer Canadien Pacifique) , also known simply as CPR or Canadian Pacific and formerly as CP Rail (1968–1996), is a Canadian Class I railway incorporated in 1881. The railway is owned by Canadi ...
in Canada) * Departure yard, where car blocks are assembled into trains. * Car repair yard or maintenance yard, for freight cars. * Engine house (in some yards, a roundhouse), to fuel and service locomotives. * Transfer yard, 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 US include 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 North Platte, Nebraska, operated by Union Pacific Railroad;
Conway Yard Conway Yard (also known as Conway Terminal) is a major rail yard located in the boroughs of Conway and Freedom, Pennsylvania, northwest of Pittsburgh, along the Ohio River. It was the largest freight yard in the world from 1956 until 1980.Edwin K ...
near Pittsburgh, operated by
Norfolk Southern Railway The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31, ...
; and the Corwith Yards (Corwith Intermodal Facility) in Chicago, operated by
BNSF Railway BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three Transcontinental railroad, tr ...
. Major UK goods yards (freight) include those in
Crewe Crewe () is a railway town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. The Crewe built-up area had a total population of 75,556 in 2011, which also covers parts of the adjacent civil parishes of Willaston ...
,
Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spelling) ...
and Bescot, near Walsall; which are operated by DB Schenker and Freightliner.


Coach yards

Coach yards or stabling yards are used for sorting, storing and repairing
passenger cars A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods. The year 1886 is regarded as t ...
. These yards are located in metropolitan areas near large
stations Station may refer to: Agriculture * Station (Australian agriculture), a large Australian landholding used for livestock production * Station (New Zealand agriculture), a large New Zealand farm used for grazing by sheep and cattle ** Cattle statio ...
or terminals. An example of a major US coach yard is
Sunnyside Yard Sunnyside Yard is a large coach yard, a railroad yard for passenger cars, in Sunnyside, Queens in New York City. Description The yard is owned by Amtrak and is also used by New Jersey Transit. The shared tracks of the Long Island Rail Road ( ...
in New York City, operated by
Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada. ...
. Those that are principally used for storage, such as the West Side Yard in New York, are called "layup yards"Chicago-L.org
"42nd Place Terminal."
Accessed 2013-08-30.
or "stabling yards." Coach yards are commonly flat yards because passenger coaches are heavier than freight carriages, in the unladen state. Major UK coach stabling yards include those in
Crewe Crewe () is a railway town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. The Crewe built-up area had a total population of 75,556 in 2011, which also covers parts of the adjacent civil parishes of Willaston ...
and Longsight, Manchester, which are operated by various regional train companies.


See also

*
Classification 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 ...
*
Goods station A goods station (also known as a goods yard or goods depot) or freight station is, in the widest sense, a railway station where, either exclusively or predominantly, goods (or freight), such as merchandise, parcels, and manufactured items, are l ...
*
List of rail yards This article is a list of important rail yards in geographical order. These listed may be termed Classification, Freight, Marshalling, Shunting, or Switching yards, which are cultural terms generally meaning the same thing no matter which part of th ...
*
List of railway roundhouses This is a list of railway roundhouses. A roundhouse is a building used for servicing locomotives, large, circular or semicircular structures often located adjacent to or surrounding turntables. Australia *Goulburn Rail Heritage Centre locate ...
*
Traction maintenance depot 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 ...
* Rail transport operations *
Siding (rail) A siding, in rail terminology, is a low-speed track section distinct from a running line or through route such as a main line, branch line, or spur. It may connect to through track or to other sidings at either end. Sidings often have light ...


References


Further reading

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Rail Yard Yard es:Patio de maniobras it:Stazione di smistamento