Cumberland MD radio reports CSX restoring hump. This needs more investigation by those in the know.
CSX To Re-Install, Improve Hump at Cumberland | WCBC (wcbcradio.com)
EDIT: Is it possible for a different design of a hump to eliminate or greatly reduce the use of retarders which are expensive to maintain?
I don't know what actually took place when the hump was closed at Cumberland - to my knowledge it didn't not get the Tilford Yard treatment that happened in Atlanta.
In my 50+ years working - it was 'normal' for a new regime to 'close' some yard or facilitiy on the property and claim the closing would result in saving X millions. The next regime would come on the scene and reopen the previously closed facility and claim the reopening would save Y millions.
What happened with EHH and his version of PSR was more involved and destructive than those that happened when I was employed.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
blue streak 1EDIT: Is it possible for a different design of a hump to eliminate or greatly reduce the use of retarders which are expensive to maintain?
Interesting idea, but not sure how that would work?
In the earliest hump yards, each car had a yard worker riding it to apply the brakes manually. I'd think retarders, especially modern computer controlled ones, would be much cheaper and efficient than that.
blue streak 1 EDIT: Is it possible for a different design of a hump to eliminate or greatly reduce the use of retarders which are expensive to maintain?
blue streak 1 Cumberland MD radio reports CSX restoring hump. This needs more investigation by those in the know. CSX To Re-Install, Improve Hump at Cumberland | WCBC (wcbcradio.com) EDIT: Is it possible for a different design of a hump to eliminate or greatly reduce the use of retarders which are expensive to maintain?
Looking at Google Maps, the hump infrastructure still exists, including the tower and bridge for the locomotive duck under track. The hump lead and distribution tracks were removed. I assume some of the control systems from the tower to the retarders were also removed.
Recall that Carl (cshaverr) was a retarder operator at a Chicago area yard.
The return of a hump yard may signal recognition that loose car railroading isn't going away any time soon.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
I recall that UP tried to idle one of the humps at North Platte a few years ago. I think that lasted about a week.
wjstix blue streak 1 EDIT: Is it possible for a different design of a hump to eliminate or greatly reduce the use of retarders which are expensive to maintain? Interesting idea, but not sure how that would work? In the earliest hump yards, each car had a yard worker riding it to apply the brakes manually. I'd think retarders, especially modern computer controlled ones, would be much cheaper and efficient than that.
Not to mention safer.
Psychot wjstix blue streak 1 EDIT: Is it possible for a different design of a hump to eliminate or greatly reduce the use of retarders which are expensive to maintain? Interesting idea, but not sure how that would work? In the earliest hump yards, each car had a yard worker riding it to apply the brakes manually. I'd think retarders, especially modern computer controlled ones, would be much cheaper and efficient than that. Not to mention safer.
Back in the day - many non-retarder humps used track skates to define the far end of the tracks being humped into and let the skate stop the first car into the track and then continue to hump against the cars that were stopped by the skates.
tree68 The return of a hump yard may signal recognition that loose car railroading isn't going away any time soon.
We keep hearing that carload freight is dying and will one day disappear. Yet new boxcars, flats, tanks and hoppers continue to be built, and out here in western Canada there is still a huge amount of chemical, forestry, oilfield and farming related freight that moves long distances and in amounts that are too large and heavy for trucking yet are not enough to make a 100 car unit train.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
From the article in the opening post:
"plans are to remove the exisiting hump terminal and install new switching capabilities allowing more cars to be trafficked through the yard"
it sounded to me like they were going to replace the hump with a flat-switching facility, but they claimed that it would allow more cars to be handled. Are they going to install a "new, improved" hump?
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
"That has cost CSX across the country millions of dollards and several other yards are also abandoning the idea"
That sounds like it came form a hopeful employee more than anything else.
An "expensive model collector"
Not really. In a hump yard, each car starts at the top of the hump going more or less the same speed, accelerates due to gravity, and (ideally) passes the last retarder at a speed such that it will be at a safe coupling speed when it reaches the coupling spot. The retarders are the only way to make that happen.
All cars are see the same acceleration due to gravity, but the deceleration due to air resistance is radically different for, say, a covered sand hopper versus an empty bulkhead flat. Without retarders, loaded cars would wind up going much faster than empties. Either the empties would stall out early, or the loads would couple at damaging speeds.
The only way to work around this would be to release different cars with different initial speeds, or at different spots on the hump. Either of those would eliminate the efficiency of humping in the first place - you would basically be flat-switching on a hill.
Maybe some day we'll have microprocessor-controlled brakes on each car, and the car can just be programmed to use the car's brakes to maintain a desired speed profilr. But we're pretty far from that (and not really heading in that direction at the moment).
One thing to note is that hump yards all have automated electronic switching systems setting the routes for each cut of cars down into the bowl, while most flat-switching yards use hand-throw switches. This is a somewhat separate issue from the hump itself. You can install an automatic routing system on a flat yard (and in fact Conrail has a yard where they did just that). But, if you are classifying enough cars to justify that kind of investment, there's a good chance that you can justify the expense of maintaining a hump and retarders as well. Once you've physically removed the hump - or, if your need is in a place that never has a hump - maybe the equation would be different. It's not a stretch to think we might see some more "automated flat yards" in the next couple decades.
Dan
Replacing Hump Yards would be the application of the various autonomous operating cars - they become autonomous when released at the crest and insure a safe low impact coupling in the ultimate class track.
CP sort of tried this in Calgary. Kicking cars with power switches, not much of a hump and fewer retarders. The new yard design had several accidents over its first year or so of operation.
https://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/rail/2019/r19c0002/r19c0002.html
n012944 That sounds like it came form a hopeful employee more than anything else.
Trains news-wire
Hump and tower are getting bulldozed. Reworking the track layout and adding automated ladder tracks at each end. Hindsight being 20/20, could they have flattened Cumberland in '94 and shifted westbound builds to Gateway? It had a better footprint (more acreage and longer).
OWTXHump and tower are getting bulldozed. Reworking the track layout and adding automated ladder tracks at each end. ...
What is an automated ladder track?
SD70Dude tree68 The return of a hump yard may signal recognition that loose car railroading isn't going away any time soon. We keep hearing that carload freight is dying and will one day disappear. Yet new boxcars, flats, tanks and hoppers continue to be built, and out here in western Canada there is still a huge amount of chemical, forestry, oilfield and farming related freight that moves long distances and in amounts that are too large and heavy for trucking yet are not enough to make a 100 car unit train.
Carload growth has been little to flat. The majority of these are replacements for cars currently reaching the AAR 50 year rule.
MidlandMikeWhat is an automated ladder track?
Likewise, the 'departure' ladder can be power-switched as a departing train is made up by repeated backing and coupling onto standing cuts.
JoeBlowIs it possible for a different design of a hump to eliminate or greatly reduce the use of retarders which are expensive to maintain?
The whole premise of a hump yard is to add potential energy 'enough' that each of the cars in a cut will roll itself all the way to an assured coupling with its standing cut of cars (or to the skate or whatever in an as-yet-unoccupied track). The only real alternative to retarders is to go back to the original method: station a brakeman on each car and have him 'eyeball' just how much brake he has to wind on, and how fast to wind it on, to get the car to a guaranteed pin-drop coupling. In a world where boarding moving equipment is already deprecated, the idea that you'd stop the hump cut every time someone gets on board a car, and having the necessary number of strong backs ready to get on the cars you want to classify... well, let's just chuckle and move on.
This would be an ideal thing for a Boston Dynamics robot brakeman, with full HA-NDGPS and other sensors to get it as 'just right' (and then of course wind off the brake and check that the foundation has released, etc.). They might even be equipped with high-speed ability to do parkour or whatever to get back up to the top of the hump in ™mely fashion to reduce that expensive capital requirement. Now, in a world where a cockamamie non-starting idea like the Parallel Systems original concept can get $50 million of investment... who am I to say you couldn't finance this or make good grant money ringing the changes on how to build it (and yes, I think you could build and perhaps even maintain it)? And yes, wouldn't these eventually make nifty 'superconductors' or engine crew?
But not as good as a good proportional retarder setup with scale and sensors to measure rolling characteristics, weather, etc. One of the 'keys' to this is that both the uncoupling of cuts at the top of the hump and the programming of the retarder action has to be coordinated to allow the equivalent of block switching -- perhaps up to 40 cars in a given block -- for blocks distributed randomly in a given hump cut. If you can't assure that, you might be better off with the automated ladder, and switcher power with LOTS of hybrid energy storage and the equivalent of Ludicrous++ acceleration using it. Plus really good continuous monitoring and maintenance of the now faster-wearing parts of your approach ladder... something you can bet the PSR dolts haven't quite yet realized is going to be a concern.
MidlandMike What is an automated ladder track?
What Overmod said. The power switches are electronically controlled. Options depend on the vendor and CSX. Towers are replaced with a kiosk containing a control panel and multi-camera feeds to line up the moves, which are done by a RCO.
Now the TRAINS forum won't allow cutting and pasting!
I give up
One thing unrecognized is a pendulum swinging of sorts. There is an advantage in doing something a certain way under a certain condition, and when a pendulum swings the other way, it is advantageous to do it the other way. A SORTING FACILITY eliminates that and makes a constant flow of freight cars in various directions practical. Until such is adopted (a model train layout, or a computer similation, would prove the concept), the pendulum switching will be eternal.
croteauddOne thing unrecognized is a pendulum swinging of sorts. There is an advantage in doing something a certain way under a certain condition, and when a pendulum swings the other way, it is advantageous to do it the other way. A SORTING FACILITY eliminates that and makes a constant flow of freight cars in various directions practical. Until such is adopted (a model train layout, or a computer similation, would prove the concept), the pendulum switching will be eternal.
Through 50+ years of railroad employment - I watch the pendulum swing both ways many times. Management #1 operates a specific physical plant. Management #2 comes along and states they can save $X millions by closing Facility #14, and they close it - sending its traffic and employees elsewhere. After a period of time Management #3 comes into control and states they can save $Y millions by reopening Facility #14 and they change the operating plan and bring manpower back to Facility #14. Rinse & Repeat multiple times during my career.
On one Division, a major terminal had supervision to close one of the yards in the terminal - that 'plan' lasted about 48 hours and resulted in the terminal being codlocked and unable to move ANY traffic. That 'plan' was stopped and things reverted to the prior plan.
My hubby just laughs and remembers the SP/UP merger where UP decided that all the smaller yards around Houston were not needed besides the main one and the carnage that happened nationwide on their system for about the next 12-18 months.
Shadow the Cats owner My hubby just laughs and remembers the SP/UP merger where UP decided that all the smaller yards around Houston were not needed besides the main one and the carnage that happened nationwide on their system for about the next 12-18 months.
UP tried to move all classification from Strang Yard, in La Porte, to Englewood. Strang was classifying 600 cars/day. I think Englewood was only good for 1800/day and that was pushing it. That caused a cascading effect across the network. Typical execs, trying to save a buck without a system analysis of Strang's closure..
SD60MAC9500 Shadow the Cats owner My hubby just laughs and remembers the SP/UP merger where UP decided that all the smaller yards around Houston were not needed besides the main one and the carnage that happened nationwide on their system for about the next 12-18 months. UP tried to move all classification from Strang Yard, in La Porte, to Englewood. Strang was classifying 600 cars/day. I think Englewood was only good for 1800/day and that was pushing it. That caused a cascading effect across the network. Typical execs, trying to save a buck without a system analysis of Strang's closure..
Operating Plans have to take into account the ability of the facilities upon which the plan is implemented. Whatever the plan is - the entirety of the operating organization MUST remain fluid.
Immediately after the ConRail split, a ConRail executive was placed in charge of the CSX Operating Plan and melding it with the remains of the CR plan. The CR plan was for 'fewer bigger trains' as CR had been doing. CR had relatively bloated terminals that had their origins in their PRR & NYC predecessors whose facilites could hold several trains and still have room for inbound trains. CSX terminals did not have excess capacity to hold traffic for the 'bigger' trains and within short order the entire CSX system was codlocked to a relative standstill.
After a couple of months, the CR individual was relieved of responsibilities and a CSX individual was placed in charge and implement a new plan that had terminals performing what they were actually able to do the fluidity was restored to the entire network.
It doesn't take much to throw an operating network into situation it can take weeks or months to dig out of.
From an operating perspective, the easiest way to bring a network to its knees is in not having a sufficient number of crews working. Trains don't run without crews, a train that is no running requires track space for it to be parked until a crew becomes available, as more trains get into the situation of needing crews - more track parking space is required and the trains start getting parked further and further from the crew change location and the situation snowballs. Digging line segments out of crew shortage is HELL.
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