Hello!
Can someone tell me what a hump yard is and how it works? I read in a book that one of the rail yards (CN Walker Yard) in my city (Edmonton, Canada) has one and I want to know what it actually is.
Thanks
A hump yard is a yard that has a small man made hill at one end. The cars are pushed up the hill and uncoupled at the top. They roll down the other side into whatever track they are routed to.
The other type of a yard is a flat switching yard. In a flat switching yard the switch engine has to accelerate the cars, the switchman uncouples the car and then momentum makes it roll into the track. The switch engine then backs up, then shove back towards the yard to switch the next several cars.
A hump yard can switch more cars than a conventional yard because the engine (theoretically) makes a continuous shove on the cars its switching. Hump yards are high volume, high production yards.
The height of the hump varies. At the former SP yard in Houston the hump is high enough that other railroad tracks can run underneath it (the HBT main line). A the UP hump yard at Livonia, LA, the hump is only about 6 feet high. Just depends on how its designed.
Dave H.
Don,
The hump Dave is talking about is Englewood…and it is tall enough that, yes, the HBT main runs under the hump, along with Wayside Drive, a four lane major street.(Alt. US90)
I will dig aound and see if I can find my old photos of it…
Ed
doanster,
Hump yards are often much more complex in layout, typically having arrival and departure tracks separete from the bowl tracks which are fed by the hump. General car flow is thus arrive in arrival yard where inbound inspection is performed, ober the hump into bowl or classification tracks. Each bowl track corresponds to a destination block. To make a train cuts are pulled out of the bowl tracks to a departure yard where oubound inspection and air brake test is performed.
In most flat yards all of these functions are performed on the same tracks, with longer tracks usually favored for arrivals/departures and shorter tracks for classification, blocking, switching or sorting, which are different words for the same thing.
Mac
If you want to see a humpyard in operation,and are on a trip down this way, Enola Yard in Pennsylvania has gone back from a primarily flatswitching operation to a hump operation as well. There is a Quality Inn right across from the yards. I pick an upstairs room on the South end and it looks right out at the crest of the hump across the road from the hotel. Cuts of cars are pushed to the crest of the hump, where cars are cut off individually, or in groups, and you can watch them roll down the other side toward their new trains. This time of year is best, as leaves are off trees that line the edge of the yard. There is also a Railfan Bridge at the West end of the Yard where you can watch trains come in and out of the yard, plus the flat switching operaion, usually powered by NS Highhood Geeps and MP15DC’s or SW1500’s. Dave Williams http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nsaltoonajohnstown
You’re lucky CP also has a big hump yard in Calgary, AB.
That’s the closest one to where I live, still have never seen a hump yard in person.
Also a note, some hump yards will have retarders at the bottom of the hill, they are like the brakes on the car, but are on the inside of the rail, so when a car comes rolling by, the flange is squeezed, and the car slows down.
The CP also has a large hump ;yard is St. Paul, MN. I have worked on it several times. It is known among conductors as the march of death. As the engine shoves the train up the hump, when the first car nears the crest a horn sounds and the humpyard computer takes control of the locomotive from the engineer. The computer also operates the switches. The are about 35 tracks in the bowl (don’t quote me on that one, I haven’t worked that job for quite a while) A large digital display board is mounted near the crest tells the conductor where to make the cut. The trick is to let the car crest the hump slightly as to relieve pressure on the pin, otherwise uncoupling is almost impossible. The drill is walk beside the car, pin lifter in hand, pull the pin at the precise moment, walk two carlengths back, and start the process all over. Your feet are definately tired by the end of the shift. Hensce, the march of death! Personally, I would do just about anything to get out of working the hump! The last time I worked the job, something malfunctioned with the computer. Slowly, the computer kept speeding up the locomotive. I felt like I was in one of those old movies where the pies keep coming out of the machine faster and faster until they end up on the floor. Thought I was going to have a heart attack! geoff
Wow!
Thanks for all the help.
I will see if CN will let me visit their yard somehow…
dwil89: If only I lived anywhere remotely close to Pennsylvania…
" A hump yard can switch more cars than a flat yard?"
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I wasnt going to say anything, but since the dusty pheasant got tickled…
I work for the PTRA, in the North Yard, as a switchman.
There are three switching jobs per shift, three shifts per day.
One job works the north end, the other two work the south end of the yard.
We average 250 cars per job, plus doing all our own trim work and set out to the departure yard for initial terminal air testing.
That 750 cars per shift, or 2250 car per 24 hour turn.
On a really, really good day, the UPs Englewood hump might hit 1000 cars over the hump…
Hump yards are less manpower intensive, and you can build longer trains in them, often using the track you humped them into to do the inital air test and depart the train from that same track.
The drawback to hump yards is you only take apart one train at a time.
In a flat yard like mine, we do them three at a time.
More manpower, but more cars switched…
Ed
If you go to http://www.railroadradio.net and select the Harrisburg/Harrisburg LineStream, you can listen to live scanner talk in Enola Yard, as well as on the NS Main, Harrisburg Terminal, Buffalo Line, and Port Road. Enola is using remote control locomotives in some of its operations there. You can hear the remote communications too. Dave Williams http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nsaltoonajohnstown
I will make a plug for the only bi-directional hump, BRC’s Clearing Yard. Clearing has two sets of everything, one set eastbound and the other westbound with one hump in the middle. It is not unusual to see cuts shoved over the hump in both directions at the same time. The hump is high enough for balloon tracks (dating back to the steam era)to pass under it with ample clearances. Hump pushers are derated SD40/slug sets and pulldowns (trimmers) are SW1500’s/MP15’s/GP38-2’s equipped for remote control.
I know Bailey Yard in North Platte, NE is the largest classification yard in the world. They are in the process of building a tall tourist tower so you can watch all the action from 9 stories in the air. Sounds like fun to me. So if you’re ever driving cross-country on I-80, North Platte would be a good pit stop.
Kurtis
Perhaps not more cars, but they are (as Ed said) most definately more efficient than flat switching.
We do all right at our hump yard. We’re supposed to be classifying 2000 cars a day over the hump, but definitely need more room to put the cars once they’ve left the hill.
Mac,
True, they are more efficent at building a train in place…
Like Carl said, he can 2000 over the hump…its just ahving a place to put them.
Where I work, it pretty much gets outta dodge as soon as its built.
The crew that switches spends the last hour of the shift swinging tracks over into a departure yard, spotting the track for ground air, making sure there is cover cars in place…
Carl can do all of that from his tower.
I think the best way to clairfy it would be to state flat yards are more versatile than a hump yard, we are not locked into the way we switch cars, I can make cuts and slough cars to a different track, then pick them up later at my need…
I can also block out cars for different industries, then fold it all up in a paticular order when I swing it.
Humps are great for classifing cars, everything for a given yard or city goes in a paticular track.
Flat yards are great at blocking out trains to the final customer, everything for Shell goes here, everything for Pasadena Paper Mill goes here, so forth and so on…
Ed
Over the years I have watched several operating type obsess over humps. What I don’t see is the guaranteed savings. The fewer engines and engineer’s required is offset by more M/W and signal folks required to keep the dowty retarders and hydraulic switches in working order. Can think of multiple places where humps no longer exist, partially because they were a terrible idea requiring an awful design in the first place. (Armourdale, Pueblo and a few others come to mind)
Different strokes for different folks…2 different jobs, generally disjoint. With less need for and subsequent reliance on enroute reclassification of carload freight, the hump yards are definitely gonna continue to disappear.
Some good old photos of Englewood in Steve Goen’s new book on the T&NO, Ed, including some of the real Sunset blowing through there on the main.
Great, will see if I can find a copy…
There is a railroader, used to work for SP, that took his camera along with him a lot…
I cant remember his name, but he posted a lot in railpics…
He has a few shots from the late 70s, showing the east end and the hump at Englewoood, before they rebuilt it and Wayside drive…shows the old interlocking tower…he had one of the 4449 in Daylight paint running down the T&NO main…
I think his last name was Ward…
Englewood is a very interesting place, you can sit there and watch them hump cars, and see two very active mains, along with the intermodel yard, all from one street!
Ed
Ed
Would like to know more about mini-humps or humps like the UP at Livonia.
Thanks,