Yard Operations

[Anonymous]

Where to begin ??
Hello there, I just wanted to start a thread on (large yard) operations. I have so many questions I'm not sure where to begin. I work close to the CN Yard in Toronto, but it is really difficult to get a feel for how it operates. I'm just wondering how a consist is put together.
I assume products are shipped to the yard via truck and then loaded in the cars etc, whether it is intermodel, centre beam or whatever. Is there any particular car or car number that they would use, or whether a different roadname is used, based on destination?
The yard is a humping yard, so I kind of understand that, but would they be setting up two or more consists at the yard and does it take a few days to set up and thats the reason for so many sets of rails?
Also, how is it determined how many locos are used for a consist? I'm sure its based on weight, but is there a calculation, for where it is going, if they need locos at the destination and/or is it based on a factor of lets say 1.5 x the power needed. Also how and when are leased locos used. I see UP , NS , WC quite often.
Any information would be useful, so thanks. I've got some more Q's but I'll leave it at this. For now , lol.

[Anonymous]

The yard in the town I live in used to be an 8 mile hump yard, but has since been removed by CSX. i kind of understand how it worked. the train is run up the hump, the tracks are switched, and the car glides into the new train. Depending on how many trains a day come in, the new train could leave within the day, or within the week. The trains are set to stop at differant yards along to their destination. when they would come to a new ard, the train would be re-sorted onto trains to differant sorting yards, or to the final delivery destination, kind of like using differant size grids to seperate stone sizes.

[michaelstevens]

Seems to me that Trains Mag. did an extensive series on yards, blocking operations etc.., within the past couple of years.
can we hook "higssy" up with those back issues ? electronically ?

[Anonymous]

I've learned a few things listening to the West Hump dispatcher at BNSF's Northtown
Yard in Minneapolis. I hear trains being communicated-with that are Superior-
Galesburg, Tacoma-Chicago, LaCrosse-Pasco, Northtown-Wilmar, etc., etc. Near
as I can tell, sometimes a train is a through-freight that stops there to make a crew
change and will have its locomotives refuelled either by a fuel truck to do it faster or
they have to cut them off and send them to the "house" to be fuelled. Sometimes
they change-out the power or add or replace locomotives in a consist. I've heard
through-freights being ordered to set-out a cut of cars on the head-end of their
train, so they do perform some switching in the yard on the way to their ultimate
destinations. If you can get a Bearcat scanner and tune it to the yard operations
channels, you'll learn a lot. I can't often hear the train crews in the yard talking to
the hump dispatcher because my house is over 25 miles away from the yard, but I
can hear the dispatcher real clear and yet I have begun to understand a few things
over time. It'll all sound kinda complicated but over time you can sort-out some of the
basics of how things occur (that's why I want a yard layout of Northtown!).

[Anonymous]

Are both incoming and outgoing trains humped ?

[AltonFan]

I'm sure our working railroader friends may be able to speak more authoritatively on this. But this is what I've learned over the years.

QUOTE: I assume products are shipped to the yard via truck and then loaded in the cars etc, whether it is intermodel, centre beam or whatever. Is there any particular car or car number that they would use, or whether a different roadname is used, based on destination?

Typically only container and truck trailer loads are loaded at yards. Most other products are loaded into empty cars where they are produced and local trains bring the cars to the yard for forwarding.

Suitable freight cars from foreign roads (i.e. other railroads) are supposed to be selected first, and generally shipped back the way they came, or at least in the general direction of the car owner's railroad. (This is to assure general equality in the shipping revenues and costs.) Some cars may be assigned to specific factories. And some cars that can only be used for specific commodities, may be shipped back empty.

QUOTE: The yard is a humping yard, so I kind of understand that, but would they be setting up two or more consists at the yard and does it take a few days to set up and thats the reason for so many sets of rails?

Are both incoming and outgoing trains humped ?

Each track represents a different destination. Switchers at the far end of the hump collect the classified cars and build them into outgoing trains in departure yards. This shouldn't take more than a few hours.

Basically, incoming trains, if they are not running through to another destination, are humped, and this creates the outgoing trains.

It should be pointed out that certain loads and cars (e.g. auto racks, center-beam flats) cannot be humped and have to be flat switched. One Chicago-area yard is actually marketing itself as a destination for auto racks and other "do not hump" cars

QUOTE: Also, how is it determined how many locos are used for a consist? I'm sure its based on weight, but is there a calculation, for where it is going, if they need locos at the destination and/or is it based on a factor of lets say 1.5 x the power needed.

As many as are ordinarily needed to pull the train. A train that originates in the flat midwest might need sufficient power to climb mountains in the west. A train that can be handled with two units on Monday may need four on Wednesday when it makes its return trip. Power being moved between terminals may be put to work with the regular engines on a particular train.

Hope this helps.

[jchnhtfd]

Cars are almost never loaded at a classification yard. Large intermodal transfer 'yard's do load containers, but they are really a very different kind of thing. I think the CN yard you're looking at is a classification yard. Yes -- you mention it has a hump, so it is a classification yard.

OK. So what happens basically is that a train comes into the yard -- perhaps from a distant yard, perhaps from a 'local' run (which picks up loaded or empty freight cars from industries and, sometimes, interchanges, and drops off other loaded or empty freight cars). The road power is may be cut off for servicing (see below about run throughs), and the switchers take charge of the train. Each car in that train needs to be sorted out and placed in the correct train so it can be taken to the next destination, possibly another yard at some distance or possibly taken out by a local to industries and what have you. This is the function, in a hump yard, of the hump and the group of tracks it serves, which are the 'bowl' or classification area. As the car is pushed over the hump, its destination is determined (a lot of ways to do this) and the switches in the bowl are thrown so that it rolls down onto the track on which the train for its destination is being assembled. There may be a great many trains for a great many destinations being assembled all at once -- hence the many tracks! At some point a train is ready to proceed to the next destination. At that time, its weight is determined and its destination, and motive power is assigned based primarily on weight, route, and schedule (that is, a fast intermodal, as it might be for UPS, would get a lot more power for a given weight than a coal drag) and off it goes.

A great deal of time and effort (and, on the part of the trainmen, heroics!) is put into reducing the amount of time a car spends in a yard -- a one day turn is really too long. Also, a great deal of time and effort is put in to setting up a train so that all the cars for one destination are in one block in the train (for instance: a train from Toronto to Chicago may have cars in it for Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans as well as Chicago -- the objective is to get all the LA cars together, all the SF cars, all the NO cars, and all the Chicago cars -- saves a LOT of time sorting things out in Chicago!).

It takes a few hours to a day to set up a train. As I noted above, anything over a day and somebody is going to be working like mad to figure out how to reduce it.

The horsepower thing I noted above -- there are tables for this.

Leased locomotives are very different from run-throughs. Run throughs are very very common these days, as it is not unusual for a properly blocked train to arrive and only a portion of it be uncoupled. The engines are serviced where they are if at all possible, and another block of cars hooked up by a switcher, and off you go again (with a new crew!). For example, you may start from LA with an intermodal; you might have a couple of BNSFs on the point, and say a CSX and a CN in there (just for example!). The block behind the engine is Toronto; other blocks are say Newark, Atlanta, and Selkirk. At Chicago, the blocks are split up; the Toronto block at the head end keeps its engines, while a Toronto block which came from a train from San Francisco and another from Seattle is tacked on behind, and the whole show heads for Toronto -- with the BNSF power still on the nose. Simplified, of course.

An effort is made to send engines more or less in the direction of home when possible...

This help any?

[rrnut282]

higssy

One thing I will clear up is that there is no loading of cars going on at a hump yard. All cars arriving were loaded at a shipper's siding or team track or are empty going somewhere to get loaded. Only in an intermodal yard are cars actually loaded (with a container or trailer.)
A hump yard's primary purpose is to make money by sorting cars into blocks that are more effiecient to handle than one car at a time And to that faster than can be done at a flat yard. These blocks can and usually are based on destination or commodity. The idea of a yard is to take an inbound train, break it apart into new blocks going in other directions on different trains, otherwise there would be no reason to take it apart. Some trains are said to be "pre-blocked" and can bypass a particular yard along the way, like unit trains and intermodal.
You also ask about car use and numbers. That's complicated. The usual routine goes something like this, with many variations. A shipper calls the railroad's customer service department and says, "I have X number of Y to move from A to B." The agent taking the call does a number of things. They check to see what kind of car(s) that Y can be loaded on and their capacity. Then divides X by the capacity to see how many cars it will take. Then the agent checks to see if there are any cars available (sitting empty) nearby. He/she will do their best to reduce the "per-diem" charges the railroad pays to have a car on their tracks. (Each day, the owner of a car, whether a railroad, private shipper, or leasing company gets to collect from whomever currently has possion of the car, loaded or not.) If there is, the next day's local can get them and spot them at the shipper's siding. If there are none close, then the search is on. Once found, the cars have to be routed to the shipper. Once spotted at the shipper's siding, the shipper gets to pay the per deim charge until he calls back to say they are ready(loaded). The local goes out to pick up the cars and takes them to the yard to be put on the next train going in the right direction. If it takes a lot of cars, say 45 or more, the shipment can be come a unit train. A unit train, generally, is a train of one commodity that travels from origin to destination in one piece.
On the locomotive side of this, you're on the right track when you guessed it has something to do with wieght. Each line has been rated as to how much tonnage a given locomotive can pull up and down the line without delay. Usually, though, that gets thrown out the window to other considerations like: we've got more than we need, let's get rid of a few; this unit is having problems, so add another just in case; or that's all the power available, get going.

[edblysard]

Ok, I will give it a try...
We are a terminal railroad, meaning we are both the final destination for cars from the class 1 roads, before they get to the shipper/reciever, and a point of origin for the class 1 for the majority of the products that come out of the refineries along the Houston Ship Channel.

On inbound trains, those coming to us to be taken apart and the cars delivered to the receivers/shippers, we block, or switch the cars into different tracks, say all the Shells go in track 40, all the Dow cars to 41, all the Phillips plastic cars to 30, and all the Phillips petroleum to 31, ect...

We do this flat yard switching, but a hump yard does the same thing, just lets gravity do the work.

After the cars have been blocked out by destination and receiver, we double over the tracks in the order the plants(receivers) will be worked or spotted, in this instance, the two Phillips tracks to the Shell track to the Dow track, and then place this new train in a out bound to industry track to allow the carmen to lace up the air hoses, and test the air brakes.

Then one of our crews, as PTRA Job 233, takes the train out to the refineries, and spots the cars in the plants.
While they are out there spotting the industries inbound cars, they also pull the
industries outbound cars for the class 1 road we serve.
These may be empties or loads
.
All this occurs on the east side of the yard, tracks 19 through 48.

The west side of the yard does the same basic work, seperating cars brought out of the ship channel area, but blocks them out to the tracks assigned to the class 1 roads for interchange, or pick up.
This is where job 233 will leave the outbound cars they pulled from the industries they spotted earlier.

Up gets tracks 18 & 17, BNSF gets track 16, 15 & 14, Tex Mex gets track 4.

The other tracks are for hold cars, bad orders light, bad order heavy, cars coming in from one ship channel industry but going back to another ship channel industry, and overflow form the class 1 tracks.

Here is where it can get tricky.

UP likes their cars blocked out in the order of the yards that outbound train will pass through, with the first block of cars destined for the first yard, the second block for the second yard the train will go through....

Because the very first yard any UP train out of our yard will pass through is Englewood, all the cars destined for Englewood have to go in first, no matter where in the switch cut we are working them may be, and they are scattered through the consist when we pull the industries.

Some of the cars that come out of the Deer Park refinery complex may go to BNSF, some to UP or Tex mex, and they are all mixed together.
Shell may be sending ten cars out on UP, but 15 out on BNSF, and 1 to the TexMex, and they all come out of the same plant at the same time in the same cut of cars pulled by Job 233.

So the crew building the class 1 outbounds have to stash some cars until all the Englewood cars are in the UP track, then pick up the stashed cars, and do it all over again with the cars for the next UP yard after Englewood.

So forth and so on, untill the train is built to the UPs request.

BNSF tracks are blocked by city/ destination, everything headed to LA is put in first, then everything for New Mexico, ect... west bound cars here, east bound cars there, its a little easier, big cuts of cars.

No one loads or unloads any car in the yard.
Its too dangerous.

Not all inbound trains are loads, and not all of the cars in a train are going to the same place, or needed at the same time.

Say Phillips plastic just got a order for a million pounds of surgical plastic from a medical supply manufactor in Chicago.

So now Phillips needs 150 covered hoppers so they can load the plastic up and ship it.

They call around to the various car leasing companies and the railroad agents who store the empty cars, and have the empties rounded up and shipped to us.

They may come in all mixed up in UP, BNSF or the Tex Mex trains, but they all are going to Phillips plastic refinery in Pasadena, Texas..

I get a list of what cars go where on each inbound train.

As the Phillips cars trickle in on the UP, BN and Tex Mex, we sort them out into track 30, and a few other tracks, and of course switch the other inbound cars into the tracks they belong in for those customers.

When we have enough hold cars to fill Phillips order for 150 empties, we send these tracks out on the next one of our trains headed that way, and we spot the cars in Phillips receiving track inside their plastic refinery.

When they get the cars filled, they call our clerks/agents, who cut orders for us, and we pull them, bring them to our North Yard, and in this instance, put them in the track assigned for BNSF to Chicago, to go out on the next BNSF outbound train.

All yards work somewhat the same way.

UPs Englewood yard in Houston is a hump yard, and they have tracks assigned for cars destined to go to BNSF, CSX, NS, local and transfer trains, other UP yards, and their own trains headed in the direction of the cars final destination.
You get the point.

So as they shove them over the hump, the hump master directs the cars to different tracks depending on the destination of the car.

Some may be local industries, some may be bound for LA, or Chicago.

When a train is complety humped, or switched out, then the hump crew takes a break, while the trim crew empties the tracks, and folds up the outbound trains in a seperat section of the yard.

Then it all starts over, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

On average, we switch around 2000 cars per 24 hour day at our North Yard.
We receive five to ten inbound trains from our member lines, including bulk trains, (grain and coke trains) and several transfer runs from local yards per day.
We send out three or four UP & BNSF trains a shift, one Tex Mex daily
We work three shift per 24 hours.
Average outbound train from us to class 1's is between 70 and 100 cars, average in bound to us from them is about the same.
Stay Frosty,
Ed

[PNWRMNM]

The purpose of the yard is to create order our of disorder. Ed did a great job of explaining the detail, I will try an overview.

In general, an outbound train will consist of specific "blocks" of cars all going to the same or similar destinations. It really does not matter how far apart the destinations are, can be an in town switch job, an out and back local, or a transcontinental train. Because the railroad is a linear system, the work to be done must be done in a sequence that is controled by the geography.

To build a train you take your inbound cars, or yard tracks, or both and spread them by destination. Think of sorting a deck of cards by either suit or number. If you are going by suit you need four stacks (tracks), by number you need thirteen. If you only have seven tracks you can sort six numbers and sluff the rest, which is how most yards really work, or you can get into complicated mathmatical routines that I have never seen applied in practice.

After you spread them, in either a hump or flat yard, you double them together in the order you want. In a high volume yard the cars will usually end up on a departure track where the mechanical forces have easy access to speed up inspection and in some cases light repairs. In an older yard that never had enough volume to support the investment this will occur on any convenient track. In a low volume yard you may not have the mechanical forces so you gather them up, test the air and go.

Car distribution is a whole separate subject. Basically you have railroad controlled cars and private cars. Private cars will go where the owner wants them to go. Ed's 150 car plastics shipment almost certainly involved private cars. Phillips probably has thousands of cars on long term lease. If they need more, they will do shorter term, even as short as a trip lease from a car owner who is in that business. Of course, the short term lease will cost more by month than the long term.

Railroad owned cars may or may not be assigned. If they are assigned they go back to their assignment. If they are not assigned they will be moved toward a load. An empty BNSF grain car at a port will go to the Northern Great Plains for example. Car distribution is now centralized on each railroad. The days of the agent calling all up and down the line are over. For most car types each customer places a weekly order and the railroad fills it as best they can. In the past effort was made to load a car home, and some still is. With only 4 big railroads this has become a lot easier to keep track of than it was even 30 years ago.

Power assignment is controlled by the train brief. Is usually stated as minimum horsepower per ton. This can range from half HPPT for coal train moving down stream to 4 or 5 HPPT for a hot intermodal train. For typical manifest on territory of 1% or so grades, figure 1.5 HPPT. Mountain grade of 2.2% will need about 2.5 HPPT.

Hope this helps.

[dehusman]

First cars are not loaded at a yard (per se). A large yard may have an intermodal ramp associated with it where they load piggybacks, but that is technically not a part of the "yard" operations. Cars are loaded at industries and brought to the yard by various trains.

A classification yard is a yard where cars are sorted or "blocked" or "classified". The criteria is generally by destination, but there are dozens of things that could determine a block (car type, customer, commodity, load/empty status, interchange carrier, etc). Trains arrive at the yard, they are mechanically inspected for physical defects and the air brakes are bled off so the cars will roll free when switched. The cut is then switched. Each track in the "bowl" or class yard where the cars are sorted, is assigned to one or maybe two blocks or destinations. So all the auto parts for Mexico are put in one track, all the empty grain cars are put in another, all the cars for the north local are put in another track, etc. The blocks assigned to each track vary from yard to yard and railroad to railroad.

All of the above apply to both a hump yard or a flat switching yard. the only difference is that in a hump yard the cars are shoved up a small hill and gravity makes them roll down into the bowl track, In a flat yard a switch engine has to shove them to make them roll. The process and concepts are the same.

When it is time to build a train or enough cars have accumulated, an outbound train will be built, The bowl or trim engine will couple up all the cars in the bowl track and move them to a departure track or the outbound train may be made in the bowl track. If there are more than one block or destination in the train, the traim engine will put the several blocks in the outbound track in the order required. The carmen will then connect all th air hoses, connect the trainline to an air compressor in the yard (yard air) and charge the train line. They will do an initial terminal air brake test. The outbound power will get on the track and then the train will be ready to go. On average a car spends about 12-36 hours in a yard being processed.

I have skipped several intermediate details, but that's the gist of how a yard works.

Engines are assigned depending on the weight of the train, the power/capacity of the engines, the priority of the train and the territory they operate over.

Normally when you see a "foreign" locomotive (e.g. NS on the UP) its not "leased" exactly, its there as run through power where one railroad sent a train onto another. The railroads have agreements between themselves to share engines and EOT's so they don't have to keep swapping engines at every interchange. Engines are paid for with horsepower hours. Each railroad keeps track of how much horsepower is on another line for how long. For example if an SD40 is on another line for 5 days, thats 5 days x 24 hrs/day x 3000 hp = 350,000 hphrs. At the end of the month all the railroads compare how many hphrs they all owe each other and then pay each other back in engines. If the NS has 25 million hphrs on the UP and the UP has 24 million hphrs on the NS, then the UP owes the NS 1 million hphrs. The UP will give the NS an SD40 to use for 2 weeks to pay back the debt (14x24x3000=1,008,000 hphrs).

Dave H.

[Anonymous]

Thanks all for the information, theres certainly alot of information to digest. I plan on modelling an extensive yard in HO, so I want to know how it functions first, I just have to wrestle with some of the RR terms such as blocked out etc.

As cars are humped to there respective tracks, are they left there or are they switched to a departure track. When humping an inbound, how many different tracks would you expect to set. ie. how many cards in the deck. I realize it would vary, but expecting to see each consist having blocks , I would assume being organized it may have less than I realize.
Would the hump master know what he is to receive the day before so he could set the amount of tracks to set on any given day for an outbound.
Also if there is a block, for a destination say Chicago, from Toronto and there are only 25 cars, would he know if there are more coming a couple of days from now and hold it, or does it go on its way with a block set to another destination.
Cheers, Richard

[edblysard]

higssy,
e-mail me and I will send you a copy of the PTRAs North Yard Classification list, so you can get a idea how a yard is laid out.
Ed