Just out of curiousity I wanted to ask how big are the frieght yards in your town for width & length? Is there many trains going through & many industries/clients served? I like taking a look at any sized rail yard. Calgary has 2 large yards - Ogden & Alyth - Canadian Pacific runs several trains east - west & north to Edmonton & south to Lethbridge & the Coutts/Sweetgrass border crossing. Canadian National runs trains north to Edmonton through Alix Junction & Camrose & northeast to Saskatoon.
I’ll mention Clearing Yard on BRC in Chicago, approximately 4 miles long and about 3/4 mile wide. It has a bi-directional hump in the middle, serving a complete classification bowl in each direction. Each bowl also has its own arrival and departure yards. Schematically, you have two complete hump yards in each direction, with a common hump.
Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan has a massive C.P.R. freight yard as it is a divisional point and a heavy haul facility.
Your right, tatans, the frieght yards in Moose Jaw are huge. I used to live in Saskatoon & used to visit Moose Jaw about once a year. For a rail buff, the frieght yards are worth visiting Moose Jaw by itself. All the rail traffic that heads east - west & goes down to the USA through Weyburn & Estavan.
Is there much Canadian National frieght traffic through Moose Jaw any longer?
Not much C.N.R. the line goes over to Regina and spreads out from there, CN (with another operator have a small branch line S.E. of the “Jaw”) The old CN station in MJ is now a spa.
Here is a shot of the yards in San Diego as seen from the balpark district web cam:
Far left is the trolley yard, then the Coaster layover tracks, and the SDIV yard, and on the far right, under and beyond the underpass, is the BNSF yard.
Local yard is about 8 tracks plus a wye, but you’ll often find cars in semi-long-term storage there. Only two locals daily usually run out of it, and I’ve seen them with just a couple of cars at times headed both to and from the yard. Railroad served industries are getting scarce hereabouts.
hire road yard
just a small yard to service gm and hold cars for the maumee and western.
its located off of rt 18 in Defiance across from gm
stay safe
Joe
The “neighborhood” yard (where I work) takes a big gash out of five of Chicago’s western suburbs. If you go from the extreme north end around the bend to the extreme east end, you’re talking five to six miles in length. We have a 29-track receiving yard, a 66-track classification bowl, two departure yards with at least 30 tracks total, and an intermodal facility, as well as locomotive and car repair facilities and trackside industries… In one area, crossing from one side to the other would involve about 80 tracks, with intermodal blacktop and an industrial strip besides.
The closest big frieght yard in my area is West Colton. It’s about 5 or 6 miles long and 3/4’s to 1 mile wide. It has a capacity of 1,800 cars. There are 48 classification tracks, 14 departure tracks and averages 15 outbound trains a day.
tatans? Are you referring to the old CN station not far from downtown Moose Jaw or the YMCA? There is a park almost right there. Yikes, last time I was in Moose Jaw was about 3 years ago. I saw what I thought was the old CN station - it was in pretty rough shape. [:0]
Decript actually. Is the CP line up through Tuxford still in use[?] I think it only saw a couple of frieghts a week when it still ran though Outlook to Kerrobert then up to Wilkie.
Doctster: Last year there were trains to Tuxford, Eyebrow and Elbow, Not much traffic maybe once or twice a week (someone must know) The old CN station is East of Crescent Park, the station is restored physically outside but is a spa inside, There is actual train movement on this line-- The massive C.P.R staion downtown is now a Government liquor store(at least they saved it)
tatans. Thanks for the information on the Tuxford line. I heard the rail bridge at Outlook couldn’t handle the newer grain hoppers, thus the reason for abandoning that section of the line. [;)]
You’re right, it is Crescent Park. I liked being in that park, lots of trees. [:D]
I remember that the old Canadian Pacific station is now a liquor store.
Wow Chad!
I did not know there was real industry or Port activity left in San Diego that BNSF served.
For some reason I got the impression that San Diego was nothing but high tech and aerospace firms with a lot of tourism thrown in the mix.
The only yard I saw a lot was the 5 years I lived in Bluefield, WV and the 19 years I lived in Bluefield, VA. The Bluefield yard was the highest hump yard east of Denver. The last few years I lived there (the last year was 2001), they began to take out a lot of tracks. The yard handled mostly coal hoppers.
There aren’t any frieght yards in Cuero. We are bearly a speck on the state of Texas map.
Is not the North Paltte yard of the UPRR the largest in the world? [:p]
Curiosity-how many cars can you run over the hump in an hour? More (and longer) bowl tracks are fine but I’d expect the hump itself would be the limiting factor.
Trains get pushed over the hump at 2 mph or so. That works out to about 3 cars per minute or 180 per hour. However, there needs to be time to queue up each train to be humped, so actual capacity is quite a bit less. Other considerations include time for maintenance and some capacity cushion to keep things fluid.
If you want to get an idea of actual yard throughput, look at NS’s performance measures web site. They are the only ones who post terminal car counts. The busiest hump on NS is Elkhart where 14000 cars are handled per week - or ~80/hr. Actual hump counts are a bit higher because some cars are humped more than once since the yard makes more classifications than it has class tracks.
There are lots of finished autos going out of here. There is also lots of tank cars going in and out of here. And the SDIV trains seem to be getting heavier and heavier (I don’t see them but I hear them most nights). There also is a good deal of lumber cars and plastics loads too. There was also a intermodial ramp but they closed that last summer.