Yard Types

[Anonymous]

I was wondering why the April 2003 issue, map of the month (p. 42 - 43) did not include BNSF's Gibson and 20th Street Yards in Omaha, NE; UP's Council Bluffs yard in Council Bluffs's Iowa (September 2003, p. 41 and following); and IHB"s Norpaul yard outside of Chicago?

Will the August 2004 Map of the Month include intermodal yard's such as BNSF's Cicero and Corwith Yards in suburban Chicago and Logostic's Park near Joliet.

Tim King
Chicago Ridge, IL

[dehusman]

There are classificiation yards (hump and flat) that sort cars and terminate and originate trains.
Within a classification yard there are sub yards. The arriving or recieving yards is where an inbound train goes before its switched. The classification yard or bowl is where the cars are sorted or classified. The outbound or departure yard is where the outbound trains are made up and readied for departure.

There are industry support yards that are used by locals and industry jobs to hold cars until the industries are ready for them.

Storage or Storage in Transit (SIT) yards are large "warehouses" on wheels for products or holding locations for empty equipment.

Interchange yards are yards where railroads exchange cars.

Dave H.

[Anonymous]

Over here in the U.K. the most common yard is called closed!

[daveklepper]

A classification yard can be a flat yard or a hump yard. In addition there are holding yards, receiving yards, departure yards, bad-order-car yards, coach yards (Chicago's METRA "Zephyr Pit"), and scrap yards!

Freight train arrives at a terminal, goes directly to receiving yard, road power cuts off, and in the old days a caboose would be removed from the rear. Now just the FRED is removed. In a simple case, a switcher might tie on the rear to pu***he whole train to the classification yard hump, where cars would be released to roll down to the classification yard one or two or more cars at a time, each cut for a different track. However, it is also possible that the switcher might first separate out the "Do Not Hump" cars in the receiving yard, other special cars, or break the train into two or three cuts before proceeding to the classification yard. If the classification yard is a flat yard, then the switcher can couple on the front instead of the rear. Sometimes a locomotive can coulple on to a train directly in the classification yard and pull out to the main line. More often another switch or other switchers will build a train in the departure yard from several tracks in the classification yard, getting the train correctly "blocked" for mutliple destination to simplify switching after the train leaves, and then the locomotive ties on the front end in the departure yard and leaves for the main line from there.

[Puckdropper]

As far as I'm concerned, there's only two types of yards: Hump and flat switching. But I don't run the trains, I just watch them. ;-)

If you see a reference to a "Fiddle yard" it's a model railroad thing.

[Anonymous]

What are the different types of yards? I know classification, but what about other types?