Transfer Yards

[Anonymous]

I just got a new book called North American Railyards which is primarily concerned with hump yards. Many contain track schematics but a few show an area called a "transfer yard". What is this yard used for?

Thanks,
Ken

[edblysard]

Ken,
Transfer yards or transfer tracks are the part of a hump or switching yard where cars are placed when they are to be "transfered" to another yard for more precise switching.
Instead of the hump yard sorting them out into a certain order to spot them at a customer, they may just throw them all there, and then transfer them to a smaller yard, where it is more feasible to re arrange them into a specific order.
Hump yards are great for big block classification, lousy for local switching.

Say a local customer, Ed's oil service, needs five tank cars, but Ed needs the car UTLX1000 in his plant first, because it holds kerosene, the other four crude oil, but I need the kerosene to unload first, and the train the five cars came in on had this car in the middle, and the other four cars scattered through out the train.
The hump yard cant hold them out and place them in the order Ed needs them, due to the nature of hump switching.
It can get all five cars in one track, but there will be even more cars on top of it, so the hump yard throws these cars to a transfer track, and several times a day, this track is taken to a smaller yard, and the cars for the local industries are sorted out.

Hump yards sort cars by destination, usually other cities.
All the cars in track 1 may go to New York, track 2 is Houston bound, track 3 for LA, so forth, and track 20 is the transfer track or yard, for everything that stays here for local customers.

If the place is large enough, they may do the local switching set up right there, in the transfer track, but more often, its easier to take those cars to a yard dedicated to just this purpose.

Where I work, we receive all the transfer tracks from BNSF, UP and TEX MEX, where the cars are bound for their customers along both sides of the Houston Ship Channel.

We sort the cars out by customer, place them in the order the customer needs them, then we go pull and spot the customers, and return the pulled cars to our member lines, for forwarding back to the Class 1 roads.

To follow the kerosene car say, from New Jersy to Eds plant in Houston, UTLX1000 may leave NJ on one line, be switched into a train for Chicago, where it put on a train for Little Rock, where it is humped into a Houston bound track, along with the four other cars Ed ordered, which were in Little Rock.
UTLX1000 arrives in Houston, on UP, where they shove it over the hump.
It, and the other 4, are thrown into the transfer track for the Port Terminal Railroad, in no particular order.

This track is delivered to me, at the PTRA, where I take it apart, (all the cars for Shell go here, all the Dow chemical cars in that track, Eds oil in track 5, ect...)line the cars up in the order the industries will be worked, and make sure the kerosene in Ed's order is south out, so it end up in Ed's plant first, a job the hump yard dosnt have time to do.
We take it and the other 4 out to Ed's oil, pull the empties out, spot these 5, and return the empties to our yard, where we put them in a train bound for Little Rock, which UP will pick up tomorrow.
Make sense?

Ed

[Anonymous]

Thanks Ed ... that makes a lot of sense. I've been interested in trains since I was a kid but I'm just now (a number of years later) starting to learn a lot more about the way railroads operate. So a hump yard is more of a rough sorting area where cars are generally blocked by track into destination in no particular order. If there is room for a transfer yard the cars would be hauled there and more carefully sorted. (?) If a transfer yard does not exist then the cars are taken by track(destination) from the hump bowl further down the line where they will eventually be sorted more specifically. If I'm grasping this correctly, a transfer yard then is more of a flat classification yard that exists very near the hump yard for convenience.

Thanks,
Ken

[edblysard]

You pretty much got it, Ken.
Some big yards are really two or three yards combined, hump, classification and switching, but dependes on the age of the yard and the railroad.

Ed[:D]

[Mookie]

QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard

You pretty much got it, Ken.
Some big yards are really two or three yards combined, hump, classification and switching, but dependes on the age of the yard and the railroad.

Ed[:D]

Ed or anyone out there - any way to find out more about our yard here in Lincoln (Hobson Yard)? I know we are a hump and classification yard, but can't seem to find out much else about it. Not sure if we send cars away for sorting and where that might be.

Mook