ID These Objects

[techguy57]

Ed,
Who do the two yard in the picture (just NW of downtown HoustonI believe) belong to?
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=houston+Hobby+airport&ll=29.803505,-95.292063&spn=0.047121,0.063343&t=k&hl=en

Just curious

Mike

[CShaveRR]

Eric, not only are there no cranes at that yard, but there are no cars on the tracks. I believe that the north-south-oriented yard you are looking at is the GTW/CN's old Railport facility, which was abandoned when CN and IC merged (all of the intermodal operations moved to Markham).

I think NS' principal Roadrailer facility in Chicago is Calumet Yard (I could be wrong about that). As far as I know, Ashland Avenue Yard is not really used for intermodal at all, but merely as an interchange point (the UP has a number of trains that are symbolled as terminating at Ashland). Obviously, a lot of trailers and containers are stored there, though!

The satellite views of Corwith look a lot more like you'd expect an intermodal yard to appear, with flat cars or tubs on the tracks. If you scroll south from your shot of "Ashland", you'll come to the CSX facility at 59th Street, which is another active-looking yard.

CSX's intermodal facility south of Clearing is known as Bedford Park, for the town in which it's located.

(And yes, the Google site froze my computer a couple of times, too.)

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

That is indeed Clearing Yard located to the south and southwest of Midway. The containers and trailers inside the balloon tracks at Clearing are in long-term storage. CSX has a large intermodal terminal at Clearing which is located to the southwest (lower left) of the bi-directional hump.

[edblysard]

Note they have sorted the containers by size.
All the 20' are at the top, and the 40&45' are stacked on the diagonal...
If you look close, five track over,you can see the crane is setting bulktainers on first, then the 40s' on top of them...

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=houston+texas&ll=29.733907,-95.269521&spn=0.005182,0.006212&t=k&hl=en

Heres something you might get a kick out of...those are Volvos and Volkswagons waiting to be loaded into auto racks...
Pan around and see all the different stuff that comes into the nations 4th largest port...

Ed

[eastside]

If many of these containers are waiting to be drayed by truck to other railroads, I wonder if the images somehow illustrate the magnitude of interchange problem among the RRs in Chicago.

[Anonymous]

That's what they are: containers and trailers either to be shipped out of...or they are waiting to be loaded onto trains to be taken to where ever.

ralph zimmer [e-mail] (new email address)

[dharmon]

Well it took awhile to look at...for some reason opening it locked the computer twice....yep trailers and/or containers on chassis..

[ericsp]

They look like trailers and containers. When you zoom in all the way, you can see that many at Corwith have white roofs also. It is just that all (or almost all) at Ashland have white roofs. It seems very odd that they are so uniform.

It looks to me that this may be a RoadRailer terminal, http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=41.812334,-87.678891&spn=0.003648,0.005515&t=k&hl=en . I see no cranes there. That may explain their uniformity, it would not explain the quantity.

[eastside]

If you look at the links of the
BNSF Corwith
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=41.818653,-87.713084&spn=0.008047,0.007789&t=k&hl=en

and NS Ashland
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=41.820112,-87.677261&spn=0.008047,0.007789&t=k&hl=en

yards (Ashland is just a few miles east of Corwith), you'll see literally thousands of "sticks". Are those sticks empty containers? Oddly, to me at least, the ones in the Ashland yard are all white, whereas Corwith contains all kinds of colors. Are containers color coded?

BTW, you can tell this aerial picture was taken at an angle because if you pan a few frames SW of Corwith you'll see Midway Airport, which should be square. The North-South direction is foreshortened. Is that the Belt Railway yard just south of Midway Airport? What's interesting is that there seems to be a turntable with the shadow of a roundhouse in the northern part of the yard.