classification yards

[Anonymous]

in this month's magazine, the map of the month is on classification yards. i noticed that NS Inman yard in Atlanta,Ga. was not included. i have not been by there in a few years, but i would be surprised if a yard that size has closed. what is the deal?

[Anonymous]

I don't belive that Inman yard has closed. I would like to know the standards that trains graded yards by. There are many class yards out there not just the ones trains showed. Is Inman yard the one by the airport in Atlanta? I went to training down there but didn't get out to see much else.

[Anonymous]

Hello mjswan,

Check the criteria Trains used. I think you'll get the answer to your question.

Regards,

Paul Schmidt

[Anonymous]

I understand the criteria but why doesn't NS's Oakwood yard fall into the group? For example:
Flat switched. Lots of autoparts traffic inbound in different blocks. Outbound auto loads and empties. Local traffic broken up and sent out as far as Adrian. Locals bring back cars to be classified into trains. Multiple transfers move between other railroads. Very important to NS. Most traffic comes from KC, Atlanta, Chicago, LA Canada, East Coast. It is a yard that makes or breaks the auto industry in Michigan. Just my opinion. By the way what are STB performance measures? Never heard anything about them.

[Anonymous]

Michael:

The STB Performance Measures can be found on their website. They were instituted following merger problems so that the STB and others had a consistent and comparable way to measure railroad fluidity. We reported this in Trains.

The source material cited in the Map of the Month in April 2003 Trains includes "Class I railroads." That means we work with them, in this case to develop the criteria and decide which of the yards qualified, and which didn't. This is why it is important that any document reliant on qualified facts cite its sources, rather than leaving them unknown. It's pretty time-consuming doing this. The typical Map of the Month requires about 30 hours of staff time just to obtain, verify, and make sense of the source data. The illustrator's time is on top of this. Map of the Month is consistently the most expensive two pages in the magazine.

Your example, Oakwood Yard, is not considered by NS to be a system classification yard. NS considers it a regional yard. System yards by definition classify cars received from AND delivered to locations distant from the yard. Oakwood does this only on one end, which makes it a local yard. Also, in total daily cars processed, it's small compared to the NS system yards listed.

No yard in Detroit qualifies as a system yard.

By the way, we're working on a Trackside Guide for Detroit for the June 2003 issue.

Mark W. Hemphill

[Anonymous]

Well maybe the yard you worked at was the most important. I still think it is a major yard by they way the customer is involved. Without it most plants would run dry. As for the trackside guide make sure to warn railfanners about the stepped up police around all the yards and the most popular places. I have questioned but been let off easy. Thanks for the clarification. Hey you should run a articles about Ford Motor Co. ending railroad operations at the Rouge. Know some of the guys there and toured it once what a operation!

[Anonymous]

About Inman Yard: Trains reported a few years ago that the hump at Inman was to be closed and replaced by an intermodal facility. NS's Atlanta classification work was then shifted to a new hump in Macon GA as well as other existing humps in NC and Chattanooga. Incidently, drove past John Sevier Yard east of Knoxville TN on 22 March (Trains recently announced NS plans to close the hump). Hump was not operating Saturday, but the hump's bowl is still filled with cars.

Trains also missed hump yards in Portsmouth OH (NS) and Oklahoma City OK (BNSF). Plus, there's still a hump at CSX's Russell KY yard.

John Baie, author of Two Track Main

[Anonymous]

Senior personnel at the Class I railroads vetted the list -- if there are yards not shown on the map, it's because the Class Is do not themselves count them as "major system classification yards." We at Trains are hardly in a position to tell them they're wrong.

Mark W. Hemphill