I'm trying to write a college thesis on historical U.S. transportation.
For research of freight patterns and the like, I wanted a list of every railroad classification yard in the U.S. since 1900. Where would I start in getting this type of information - besides buying over 300 books. Help needed please!!
Library of Congress?
Online Resources?
Thanks In advance.
amrailI'm trying to write a college thesis on historical U.S. transportation. For research of freight patterns and the like, I wanted a list of every railroad classification yard in the U.S. since 1900. Where would I start in getting this type of information - besides buying over 300 books. Help needed please!! Library of Congress? Online Resources? Thanks In advance.
I don't think you quite realize what you are attempting.
First of all, what are you using as the definition of a "railroad classification yard"? Virtually every division point would classify trains to some degree or other. While changing locomotives in the steam era, and cabooses a little longer, it was easy for the yard engine to add or remove cars. Today's widespread operation of run-through trains is not typical of operation in the first half of the 20th century. Most yards depended on flat switching for classification, with hump yards relatively uncommon, mostly at a few key places on certain major railroads.
John
Every train has a beginning point and ending point. Cars are loaded by customers and brought back to yards then sorted for routes to yet another yard (excluding private carriers and unit trains) and possibly many yards afterwards.
What I want to know is the location of every sorting yard or classification yard each railroad owned since 1900.
It seems to me, someone would have had and still knows where all of America's freight and rolling stock is and travels to and where it gets sorted and loaded at all times. This means there has to be a "Master List" of some sort.
Official Guides only give interchange points. Books about individual railroads almost never provide the reader of all the yards that particular railroad owns, only select locations.
Anyone know how to get this information?
Thanks again!!
amrailEvery train has a beginning point and ending point. Cars are loaded by customers and brought back to yards then sorted for routes to yet another yard (excluding private carriers and unit trains) and possibly many yards afterwards. What I want to know is the location of every sorting yard or classification yard each railroad owned since 1900. It seems to me, someone would have had and still knows where all of America's freight and rolling stock is and travels to and where it gets sorted and loaded at all times. This means there has to be a "Master List" of some sort. Official Guides only give interchange points. Books about individual railroads almost never provide the reader of all the yards that particular railroad owns, only select locations. Anyone know how to get this information? Thanks again!!
You will have to go digging, and figure on several years to get even 75% complete.. No such master list exists. And you have yet to define how big a sorting yard has to be to qualify. Just about every crew change point had a yard of some sort, as well as certain important intermediate towns and industries. Crew changes were typically spaced at 100-120 mile intervals. About the only possible listing would be that of hump yards, usually found in advertising.
Shippers only cared about routes and interchange points for their own origin/destination pairs, not where the railroad may have had yards. The railroads themselves had no need for a master list either. The yards were where they needed to be, and nobody worried about how many were on their system. On the other hand, each siding where a freight car might be spotted for loading or unloading would have a unique identifier on the railroad itself, and all tracks had some form of name or number. While in today's computer age it is possible to trace any car anywhere on the AAR network there is no "somebody" actually monitoring each shipment. It is all done at an individual level, usually only when a car has been delayed or is a hot hot shipment needed to avoid a plant shutdown.
Think about the highways. Planners know generally how traffic uses a freeway interchange and the various ramps. But the only person who cares that Aunt Agatha started from 2884 Oak Street and is on her way to Omaha are her friends and relatives. Nobody will bother to count how many interchanges she will pass through on her trip, and most will have only casual interest in knowing the route itself. Nowadays we can locate her by dialing her cell phone, similar to using the computer to trace the freight car.
Sorry, but that's reality.
amrail I'm trying to write a college thesis on historical U.S. transportation. For research of freight patterns and the like, I wanted a list of every railroad classification yard in the U.S. since 1900. Where would I start in getting this type of information - besides buying over 300 books. Help needed please!!
You have got one formidable task ahead of you!
The only documents I can think of that would have the level of detail information you're looking for is the Employee Timetable. As an example, I have included a link for a 1963 Nickel Plate Road Cloverleaf District employee timetable (it's a pdf file).
http://www.nkphts.org/tt/toledo_stlouis_63/toledo_stlouis_63.pdf
Go to page 6 which begins the Special Instructions and you will find all the yards in the district listed with their respective special instructions. Note that for this one district, there were 8 yards that fit your definition.
Unfortunately these documents are not generally available to the general public and are probably not available in libraries. The one noted above was obtained from the Nickle Plate Road Historical & Technical Society. I'm guessing the various historical and technical societies will be your best potential sources.
Good luck; you've got a huge job ahead of you.
EDIT: I just found this link to the National Association of Timetable Collectors. You may very well find this website a valuable source during you research.
http://www.naotc.org/
Mike
John,
I do appreciate your input. You do make a couple of good points.
I am aware of crew change points, division points, and the like. I am aware of interchange points as well. My Official Guides give me all of that.
What I'm wanting is a list of classification yards. Any yard that was used to break up incoming trains and make up new ones. Example: Santa Fe's Argentine yard, UP's Bailey Yard, CSX Cumberland Yard, etc.
These are areas of multiple ladders, not necessarily humps, and cars incoming and outgoing were stored or re-routed. No standard size bur certainly much more than a siding for interchange.
As for highways, the DOT has listings of every mile in the U.S. The trucking industry publishes a list of every terminal in the U.S. and abroad. Same with airlines. To think that railroads never had the ability to look over the U.S. map and not be able to see just where all the "gathering spots" were in every state for every road, I just can't accept that. If we are able to view all the listings of interchange points for every road, why not the sorting or classification yards?
I'm just puzzled. It's not logical to think of railroads making major investments in land, rail, appliances, and the like without having some sort of documentation. I'm having a hard time understanding why this info is not readily available.
Maybe I'm making too much out of it, but, I am still aiming to accomplish this task. Hope someone can shed more light on this subject.
Mark
Hello
Good Luck!
MKT is a railroad ... Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad that is no longer running
also the "The Texas Special"
The Texas Special ran from St. Louis, Missoui to San Antonio, Texas
dont know much but you can look on the internet
also the Crash at Crush near West, Texas North of Waco on Sept. 15, 1896
also the Waco Tribune Herald newspaper and the Waco Public Library and the www.west-tx.com
the city of West..
the Katy Yard in Bellmead, Texas just has been torn down this year but I have a pic of it if you need it for your thesis but need your email to get it to you and it has the MKT trains in front of it taken by my husband in 1985...
May I suggest that you Google or Yahoo "US Railroad Maps", this brings up several web pages that have railroad maps from across the US where many show major terminal stops on specific routes, and from various time periods. They do not indicate type of yard, but generally they show terminus points and their own major transfer yards.
As others have indicated in their response's to find every yard along the routes I personally think 300 books is a conservative number. During the golden years of railroading every city or town of a reasonable size had some type of rail yard and with the large number of different railroads during these times there were hundreds of connecting points, both large and small. Look up the railroad maps of Cleveland OH, or Chicago, (there's a big one), I know there are some detailed maps of these locations, check out how many yards and connections are noted. Your thesis may turn out to be a volumed set as large as an encyclopedia.
Good luck and have the coffee pot on!!!!
The records you want but can't afford are at the Library of Congress. They are called Interstate Commerce Commission Valuation Maps. See http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/134.html or Google Interstate Commerce Commission Valuation Maps. These scale maps were done for the period 1915-1921 and show one mile of track per map. You would have to find out which maps would have the rail yards. The maps are available at $14 each for a full sheet and $6 for a half sheet. Oh and you can get up to 10 per day. There are over 117,000 valuation maps to choose from.
Either get someone to bankroll your study or scope down what you want to do to a more managable span of control.
It is possible there may have been some traffic studies done and printed up in Railway Age back in the day.
Ed in Kentucky who has seen a couple of Valuation Maps.
Sanborn Insurance Maps - ICC Valuation Reports .
Very interesting!!
I'll have to check and see if the John Barringer Railroad Library in St. Louis has and of those documents. They are close by.
Thanks for the input!!!
Any other ideas anyone?
amrail.
That would be John Walker Barriger III with no "n" for the Library benefactor. That Library would be a good place to start.
Ed
amrail Sanborn Insurance Maps - ICC Valuation Reports . Very interesting!! I'll have to check and see if the John Barringer Railroad Library in St. Louis has and of those documents. They are close by. Thanks for the input!!! Any other ideas anyone? amrail.
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