In the post about E Hunter Harrison and the changes at CP it states that several hump yards are being converted to flat switching. Why the change? Hump yards are supposedly more efficient than flat switching I thought.
I will defer to Ed Blysard on the particulars, but a lot depends on the volume of cars and amount of sorts that need to be made.
The days of one carload per industry are pretty much ove and humps are higher maintenance with no advantage switching blocks of cars. In addition containers do not benefit from hump switching. They need flat yards for yards for transfer to trucks.
That efficiency comes with a technological cost., the costs of maintaining the hump process control system - all the switches, retarders and data systems that are what give the hump yard it’s efficiencies. Power switches and retarders are high cost, high maintenance pieces of equipment. It requires a high volume of cars being humped, each and every day to make the costs of a hump yard pay for itself and bring a favorable economic return to the company.
What the tipping point in car count is between a hump yard being a productive asset and a financial black hole I have no idea. From the actions of EHH so far in his operation of the CP, it would appear that so called ‘lose car’ operations will be discouraged. I would take all the announcements that have come from EHH to mean that only unit train type movements will be solicited by the CP in the future. I suspect the existing lose car customers will be encouraged to increase their volumes to unit train levels or they will be discouraged from shipping their products in one, two and three car quantities. If you don’t have to assemble and break up trains of ‘lose car’ customers, you have no need for a hump yard.
Yes, basically, the type of traffic and type of train makes humping obsolete for the most part…plus a lot of cargo cannot withstand the rigors of humping and bumping–even at 2 or less mph. Auto racks, trailers, and containers come under that banner. Unit trains…they don’t get sorted and switched…and major blocking also make hump yards unneeded. Plus, there are fewer railroads and lines so fewer selections and sorting needed. I would think that the midwest–Chicago, Memphis, St. Louis, even maybe as far south as New Orleans–might offer need for humping trains, but elsewhere, it would be too much handling, too heavy handed handling, and too costly to operate.
On Sunday, whilst I was at Taylor, TX, I noticed a crew was switching cars in what appeared to be a process of making up a couple of trains. The engineer would pull forward until he was clear of the switch for the track that he wanted to place car. Then he would back-up rather quickly, make a brake application, and the cars that were to be cutoff would do so and coast into place. On several occasions the cars coupled with the intended cars with a hefty bang.
What would happen to the engineer or person working the back of the train if the engineer shoved the cars too hard, and they derailed when they hit the couplers on the stationary cars?
There would be aych eeee double hockey sticks to pay: drug tests for all on board and on duty, an investigation, charges, lies, cover up, stories, truth be told maybe, and suspensions or demerits and a promise to never do it again…or out right firing.
Hump yards still have their place, when there’s enough business to keep them busy. Proviso used to be a really hoppin’ place, with 1000 or so cars per eight-hour shift. With the general loss of loose-car freight (Balt, sometimes we have lose-car freight, too, but not nearly as much as we used to!) and the pre-blocking of trains at other places, it’s down to around 1000 on a slow day. It’s getting to the point where UP will be putting big bucks into it to automate it and reduce labor costs.
UP, after it merged the SP, got rid of a few hump yards (Eugene, Oregon, is one I definitely remember), and modernized a few others. It also had to build a new one in Louisiana (can’t think of the name right now), which is really a mini-hump, not in the same leagues as a large operation.
But obviously CP doesn’t have business equaling 1000 cars of loose freight per day at many locations. I remember when Bensenville Yard was a huge hump with 70 classification tracks. That operation was removed sometime around the time the Soo Line first took over. Later, a new hump (much smaller) was built, and now it looks like that will disappear as well.
(One has to wonder whether EHH was startled by a retarder when he was young!)
I used to watch something similar in Gainesville, GA, on the NS line. It comes slightly uphill, and there’s 3 tracks (I think) at the “main” crossing. One track is a lead for a couple local industries, and there’s a switch just beyond the crossing. These two tracks go downhill a bit before going back uphill to the industry, thus forming a “bowl”. I watched the local crews switch this something similar to a mini hump, going uphill, the engineer would “kick” the cars, the switchman would pull the cut levers and the car(s) in question would coast into the bowl and couple onto whatever was there. The engineer would stop, allowing the switchman to throw the switch, and repeat the process.
One story goes that (years ago) a crew had come in from a run, already on their 12 hour limit, but was asked to “Spot a couple cars right quick”. Long story short, they pushed 13 cars on a 12 car track (or something like that), tied up the handbrakes, headed back and clocked out. Next day, they report for work, someone takes them to “assess the damage”; that last covered hopper had been pushed up a 45 degree embankment. It could have been a firing offense, but it was written up as “crew fatigue”, working past 1
What you saw that crew doing was “Kicking cars”. This is something we do everyday where I work. As far as what happens in a case where something gets damaged, the first thing is to report it. Then the officials come out, pull tapes, get statements and call someone to rerail cars if needed. Discipline gets handed out as needed. Stuff happens…
EHH figures 500 cars per shift consistently for a humpyard to be worthwhile. Which sounds about right to me. Mike Ongerth and his team at West Colton Yard, managed to hump 3091 cars in 24 hours. They needed a lot of things going right to accomplish that. This was in March 1974 a few months after the yard opened.
Let’s start with the difference between blocking and classifying cars.
Blocking cars is exactly that, building up big blocks of cars that are destined for other yards where they will be switched into smaller individual trains(classified) that go out and work the industries.
Carl’s yard, Proviso is a prime example of this; they take apart long inbound trains and switch the cars into big blocks bound for other yards on the system, with a few tracks dedicated to the local industries that are worked out of his yard.
When they were through humping the inbound, it would end up looking something like this…the first 30 cars were bound for yard A, the next 40 yard B, the next 36 for yard C, so forth and so on, and the yard crew will build these blocks up in the departure yard in the order of the yards the road train will stop at in route, where it will drop off the block of cars for that yard.
Because the cars are not going to be placed in an industry by this train, the order in the train for individual cars makes little difference, as long as all the cars for that industry make it into the block of cars destined for the yard that services that industry.
They can be scattered all throughout that block.
Say the block of cars destined for yard A has a bunch of cars for the Shell refinery here in Houston…but they are mixed up with cars for Phillips and Dow.
Yard A is the place where cars headed south are re-switched into smaller blocks for particular cities or smaller flat switching yards like mine.
It makes no difference to the hump yard if these cars are mixed up, say, 3 Shell cars, then 1 Phillips followed by
The number of cars EHH wants to see in a day over the hump is 1500. All humps at CP are or will be closed except 1 - St. Paul.
Flat switching is a lot of fun. This is where the action is and this is where you separate the good yard crew from the bad. Flat switching requires a knowledge of the terrain where one works, an ability to see moves hours into the future and good physical condition. A crew must prepare for their switching by shoving tracks for space and ensuring the tracks you are switching into are secured properly. You must consider loads vs. empties and size of cuts. In addition you must consider car type and commodity. Shiftable loads, long drawbars or tank cars full of some nasty stuff might require special handling. What is the condition of the track? Straight, curved? All this is on top of what the yardmaster has instructed you to do. Build train 123 in track 1 and 456 in track two and the local in track 20. Once everything is set, you are on your way. You can feel it as a crew when everything is just ticking perfectly. All you should hear on the radio is, “pin…, pin…, pin…, stop. Ahead 10 cars… stop. pin…, pin…, pin…” The yard foreman is pulling the pins and getting nearby switches and his/her helper is playing the field. The helper is busy catching cars, opening knuckles and ensuring good couplings. He/she is also lining nearby switches. This is the real skill in railroading and the yard is where a railroad lives and dies. The main line cannot shut down a railroad (unless there is a derailment of course) but the yard can shut down the railroad if it gets plugged.
Want to talk about drops? That is how you get a car or set of cars from one end of your locomotive to the other end without doing a lot of needless driving around the yard.
In my yard an experienced yard crew can flat switch 200 - 250 cars is 8 hours depending on the size of cuts and how far apart the receiving tracks are. If you have two y
The best humpyards don’t depart trains directly from the Class tracks (Bowl), rather a trim locomotive with crew will pull the blocks from the Class tracks and set them over onto a separate Departure track so that the Carmen can connect the brake hoses and make the terminal air test, with the train left on air until the road power and crew arrive.
How much single car business does CP have? I read somewhere (perhaps on the I HATE EHH!) that over 70% of CP carload volume is unit train type movements.
If so, how does that compare to other railroads? CN runs long and heavy single car trains here on the ex GTW…more single car trains than intermodal (3 per day) or unit trains (perhaps 1 coal train per day). These single car trains are fairly costly to operate…but look at the revenue these trains generate. The tariff charges on single car railroading is thru the roof. Thus, CN is ramping up (no pun intended) Kirk Yard in Gary. Each day CN 332 exits with anywhere from 125 to 175 cars and that is just one train daily. CSX is running two trains daily into Kirk and NS is probably running at least one per day. CN has the volume of carloads to justify this.
Ed
The class one I work for and the short lines in my district have been adding a lot of car load customers,(even with a bad economy), there are probably more loose car customers now than when Conrail was running things back in the 90’s. Loose car load freight is still a big and thriving business, a lot of money has been spent on upgrading and automating our hump yards. I think Hunter Harrison is doing what is needed to make the CP more efficient. Loose car railroading should benefit by smarter blocking and less time spent being classified.
Jim
Yep.
I don’t know CP’s old blocking plan (or their new blocking plan), but just by going from what I’ve read on this forum it seems Harrison is out to turn Pig’s Eye into a “North Platte on the Mississippi” for carload shipments between western Canada and the US.
Everything carload (almost) from western Canada to the US will be sent to one place, Pig’s Eye yard in St. Paul. Then it will be sorted out using a hump yard operating with an efficient volume of traffic.
Same thing going the other way. Everything carload gets shotgunned to Pig’s Eye for cost efficient sorting.
It simplifies operations and reduces total switching. It improves the service while reducing cost.
Harrison has a proven track record for success. He won’t always be right, but the past performance lines indicate that he’s the way to bet.
However, the Luddites will always be with us. Resisting any change.
Surely you just thought you saw that obsolete, unsafe practice.
Kicking cars is obsolete or unsafe???
I hope you are being sarcastic (didn’t see any smiley faces to guide me). Always great fun to kick empty covered hoppers. That hollow “WHUMP” when they made always brought a smile to my face.