There’s a story today about a contract being awarded for brake retarding equipment for the Rotterdam marshaling yard. Do they have hump yards in Europe. I thought with their link and pin coupling system that they would have to do flat switching and at the very least have the train at a complete stop so that someone can get between the cars to uncouple them. I know that the europeans have been experimenting with better coupling systems but I think that they would just HATE to adopt North American practice to speed things up. Maybe someone can enlighten us on what is going on?
There was a story in TRAINS magazine a few years back about freight operations in Continental Europe and they do have a fair number of hump yards. It is even common practice there to hump intermodal cars (which generally are a single container on an individual flat car)…
As far as Europeans “hating” U.S railroading practice …if so why is EMD the major supplier of mainline diesel freight locomotives over there these days?
And I wonder if you have ever spent any time actually seeing European rails for yourself? If you had, you would already have known that EMD is very popular there for freight services.
I think your description of them “hat(ing) to adopt North American practice” is very off base. Where they can, and it makes sense, they will. But it has to make sense for their operating environment, which includes lots of fast and very fast passenger trains running on time (to the minute), frequent railroad junctions, congested terminal areas and so on.
I’m not sure to what extent the old chain couplers are still around, but I think they are being phased out.whenever possible. The problem is compatibility because you can’t just do any conversion piecemeal. A large fleet means that even a relatively cheap retrofit soon multiplies into many dollars, euros, or whatever currency. Over here the advantages of ECP brakes have been recognized, but there is no plan to get the entire freight car fleet refitted with them, just too costly. So far as I know, their use so far has been on cars used in unit trains where compatibility is not an important issue. And the couplers are backwards compatible.
One 10,000 foot unit train crawling along at 20mph would disrupt the rail network right across Europe. Over here the problem is the reverse, where clearing the route for a fast moving passenger train can, and sometimes does, disrupt a congested freight corridor. And they would view the many North American lines with no signalling as archaic relics of the frontier days and wonder why after a 100 years we still have not adopted the safer European practices.
John
Going back to the original question - how do they handling uncoupling on a hump yard situation. North American practice is to move the coupled cars up the hump at walking speed and take advantage of the janney coupling system and glad hands air to cut cars as required so that they can roll down to be switch to the correct designation line. All EMD Class 66 loco have be delivered with the chain and buffer system with requires someone to get on the track to uncouple the air hoses and hang everything up. Of course the train has to be stopped to do this safely. So I imagine that the euro operation probably takes already uncoupled cars and just pushes them up the ramp with the buffers!?! The western european railroad is a passenger network and except for unit trains I didn’t think they took freight seriously. Part of the eastern european rail system use the russian version similar in concept to the janney coupler and have adapted used NA locomotives with longer freights.
Creepy it’s done one of two ways, either they are uncoupled before they are pushed over the hump , or a bit more common is that the couplings are slacked but not disconnected, and a man with a wooden or fibreglass pole, levers the coupling off as it goes over the hump.
I think the news article was about Maschen Yard near Hamburg, Germany not Kifhoek Yard near Rotterdam which was completely modernized 7 or 8 years ago. Humpyards are more common in Europe than they are in the US, but many could be termed as mini-humpyards. Because of their coupling system, they do not kick cars very often.
Plug “Maschen, Germany” into Google Earth to look at the Humpyard, or if you prefer Bing Maps, use “Meckelfeld, Germany” then pan a little to the Southeast. Its a very big yard and regularly humps 5000 cars per day. A bit less with the recession.
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There certainly are many freight trains in W. Europe, including non-unit trains, besides passenger.
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Unit trains are also very common here.
There is a hump yard in Germany that is the busiest in the world; classifying 10,000 cars a day.
That comes out to an average of almost 7 cars per minute, a rather unrealistic pace unless multiple humps are involved.
It’s the Hamburg Maschen Yard in Germany and I am corrected; its actually 11,000 cars a day! yes, 11,000 cars a day. I read it in a book call “North American Railyards” in the book it talks about Baily Yard and mentions that Baily is the largest rail yard in the world but Hamburg is the busiest.
It is Maschen Yard.
Two double-track humps, one handles traffic to the ports or Scandinavia, while the other sorts traffic from the ports or Scandinavia to the rest of Europe. Each is designed to have two hump engines working simultaneously into one half of their bowl. Each bowl has three sets of retarders (primary, secondary, and tertiary), and a double set of cable powered “mules” on each bowl track to bunch the cars. So it is a very well equipped yard with lots of expensive equipment, it better be able to sort a lot of cars. Maschen handles sorting for the ports of Hamburg, Bremen, and Bremerhaven, plus the traffic to and from Scandinavia, so it needs that much capacity.
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/placemarks/71865.kmz
The Port of Hamburg is the second-largest container port in Europe. In 2008, total throughput of around 140 million tons and 9.7 million standard containers (TEU) was achieved – the second-highest result in the port’s long history.