I hope.
When you have a lead into a yard (or out of) and you have 6 tracks, how are they numbered? Do they number them from north to south, for instance.
This would apply to even 2 tracks - how do you designate them?
I was going to ask about numbering in a bowl yard, but that could get complicated.
Mook
A common way is to number them away from the main line. So the track closest to the main is #1, the furthest is #6.
If you have no main (some sort of terminal) number them down the lead, the first switch is #1 and the last switch is #6.
Think of it from the standpoint of a switchman on the lead. What’s the “first” track he will see?
Dave H.
That’s a toughie. We have a hump yard and the outbounds at our site come out of the yard into the throat on one of 6 tracks. 4 north (heading east) and 2 east that turn south. They all lead into either one (south) main line or two track main (east)
So if I am coming out of the yard - the track to my far left would be track #1 - or can anyone tell from my bad description?
Are you asking about the identifier of the main track? I’m confused about that! LOL sorry Mook.
The system of numbering and naming yard tracks is normally totally a local occurence and there normally are no system standards. In E-W Yard 1 - the tracks may be numbered 1 to 10 or what ever as the track fan out on the North side of the main(s) or the same thing could apply as the tracks fan out on the South side of the main(s). For the most part, yards, as they exist today…were not originally built in the form that they exist today…some were built much smaller and have grown over the years…some were originally much larger and have shrunk as the business they supported has left the area…all yards change over time as their business purpose and volume changes. Names and numbers change as the yards themselves change.
What the engineering department calls a track and what the operating department calls that same track are two totally different animals. The operating people, when not looking at themselves in the locomotive mirrors, have all kinds of bizarre & crazy schemes. Example:
Santa Fe/BNSF CLIC (*) numbers in places other than large yards, often segregate even and odd numbers to which side of the track you are on. (crossovers have no number at all, you can’t store cars on 'em- so they don’t count?)…The number on a track shown on an engineering map/ Val Map is never the clic Number. A switch lined “normal” by a ground monkey may not agree with anyone else’s version of “normal”…and then there are names given by trainmen for certain tracks in a yard (The Trap, Icehouse, shamrock crossover, angels flight, half tracks, long tail…mostly local lore - Ed, Wabbo,CSX and the others must have dozens of names they use all the time instead of track numbers)
Union Pacific ZTS(**) numbers work on a similar principal, but they confuse the issue by allowing some tracks to have the same zone, but different numbers (close your eyes, click your heels three times and you’re in a new zone. Ommmmmmmmmmmm? Zen Yardmasters?) Carl?
** Zone Track Spot
The yard here has the main running right down the middle, so it’s “#1 track in the east yard”, etc. IIRC, they are numbered away from the main, however…
Hardly simple at all. You’re not going to be able to determine the numbering on anything without a map or a timetable–at least that’s been my experience.
MC, I think I know what you’re referring to about the ZTS. We have two basic yards–Proviso and Global 2–sharing a lot of the same space. Proviso is Zone 4; I’ve forgotten whether Global 2 is Zone 3 or Zone 5 (there are twelve zones in this area, I think). Some of the tracks carry the same track number in both zones (track 126 is a good example). Unfortunately, cars can be shown in only one place at a time, so the track may be clear in one zone and full in the other.
We have several yards at Proviso, and in most cases the tracks are numbered in order. When the hump yard was expanded at the low end (before my time), everything was renumbered eventually to keep the tracks in order (what had been Track 1 is now Track 4). On the other hand, when they tore out a track in the receiving yard to make an access road, the gap in numbers remained as well.
I would dearly love someday to see a map of Proviso from the era when there really were nine yards in the complex, and see how the tracks were numbered. It might help me see the logic behind the numbering of some of the tracks we have now (the departure tracks are numbered from 7 Main on the north to 1 Main on the south. Next to 1 Main is 44 Main–no kidding!). When the UP came in they assigned their own numbers to all of the tracks in the yard (see “ZTS”, above); some of these are based on Proviso practice, others aren’t–so some of the tracks have two designations for that reason.
I’ve said it before, but when UP took over operations on CNW, they literally turned the place upside down. On the east-west main line, CNW numbered the tracks from south to north. UP says tracks are numbered from north to south, or from west to east. Fortunately, the dispatchers used redundant language (f
It sounds like an organized mess. What happens when you ‘lose’ a car or something goes on the wrong track but isn’t caught initially and is ‘buried’?
LOSE cars? US?[(-D]
If everyone does his job, it shouldn’t happen. There are a number of places where misplaced cars can be, or should be, caught if they occur. If it doesn’t happen that way in the yard, an AEI reader should catch it. I should mention that every week the UP posts a list of its “most wanted” missing cars (and offers a reward for finding them–I collected one once!). As one who looks at this list week after week (hoping for a repeat!), I’m actually gratified to see that the Chicago area doesn’t get mentioned too often on the list (either as a destination for a missing car or as the last place where it was known to have been), especially when compared to some areas to our south.
csx here in defiance has #1 main and #2 main.then they have the yard tracks 1-10 with 10 being the furthest to the north.trains often have coversations with the y101 crew for where they can get their cars at.
stay safe
Joe
Ok Mookie,
Get out the ZTS book I gave you and find the page with North Yard on it.
If you’re looking at the page in the same manner you would read a book, then north is up.
A lot depends on how any railroad orients its self, either east/west or north/south.
PTRA is a north/south road…North Yard is our main terminus, so anything headed to north yard is traveling railroad north, away from north yard is going railroad south.
Our tracks are numbered so that if you face railroad north, the track numbers start on the left, and get progressively higher towards your right.
In north yard, that means if your facing railroad north, track 1 is all the way to your left, track 62 is all the way right.
From any point on our road, if you’re headed toward north yard or facing railroad north, lower track numbers are on your left, higher track numbers on your right.
And as Mudchicken pointed out, we have various “names” for some portions of the railroad and some tracks…we have Santa Anna siding, King’s Pass, Pasadena Runaround, the Katy Neck, the Scenic Route, the Apron, the Butter Track, the Glass track…The Hole, the list goes on, but if you study your ZTS book, you will see they all have numbers, and are divided into zones for timetable purposes.
Most have the tracks name, if it has one, included along with the track number.
Most railroads follow some sort of similar concept, with the railroad compass being the determining factor.
The only way to determine what the number for your tracks at your “spot” is to listen to the radio and hear which track the yardmaster tells a train to enter, then compare that to the train entering the yard, write it down, and keep listening and comparing till you get a few tracks identified…then simply figure out which way the number are going, higher or lower, from your location.
Or you could flirt with one of the BN conductors and con him out of a ZTS book…
Well, here’s a cross-section of Proviso at Wolf Road, from back around 1971 when I hired out:
North to south:
20 Main
19 Main
Yard 5 (the hump bowl), Tracks 1-69.
Yard 1 (tracks 20-1)
Departure tracks: 4 Main, 3 Main, 2 Main, 1 Main, 44 Main.
Mainline tracks 2 and 1.
Things are a little different now: Yard 5 has only 66 tracks, Tracks 67-69 and Yard 1 have been replaced by Global 2, we now have seven departure mains plus 44 Main, and the mainline tracks are now Tracks 1 and 2, in that order.
Our West Yard is numbered one on the West to 16 on the east, with the main running as #11. When we added the current #2, 3 and 4 track, the whole yard was renumbered. Of course I still use the names of Coal House, Scale, New, Main, Blue Ribbon, New Ramp, Sand, and Nixon as CNW did. Old habits are hard to break.
Tracks in yards… out here it is a mess.
Main, controlled siding, westbound, eastbound, old westbound, old eastbound, 5 in 5, 6 in 5, 3 relay, 4 relay, runaround, westbound extension…
Then we have mini yards within yards… the “one yard” has tracks 24, 18-16, “two yard” has 11-16… of course not all tracks are there, as many were ripped out… so you may have 1-3, no 4, 5-11, no 12…
Then you have tracks with names like paint shop (which was torn down 50 years ago), the westward, hump spur (no more hump there)…
No real order at all - just a mess left over from lots of different RRs.
I never could find my way around that yard–even after 20 years of trying! Good thing the trainmen knew their way around.