What would it take for all boxcar and junk trains to have one huge central hump yard somehwere outside of Chicago.? New York has theres in Oak Island so Chicago could have theres…(Somewere in Indiana? ;-)…I say close all the yards and have one big huge hump yard shared by all the railroads…and sell the real estate
So, Iron Nipple, it makes sense to you to have a boxcar routed from Memphis, say, to Jacksonville, to be sent to Chicago to be classified to go with all the Jacksonville cars from everywhere else? Or if you had a boxcar in New York going to New Orleans that it should go to Chicago to be classified?
Think about that. All these yards exist for a reason, and it shouldn’t be hard to figure out what it is.
Ol’ Ed
I think he meant a central yard just for Chicago area?
There was a thread not too long ago that mentioned Belt Railway Company’s Clearing Yard was built on the site of what was to be a central yard for the Chicago area. I don’t know if IHB’s yard was supposed to be the same thing. The idea of a single place to yard cars has a certain appeal but getting everybody to agree to the details and finance it would probably take, oh, 100 years or so…
If we close 50 hump yards that make 50 classifications each and replace them with one big yard, that yard would have to make 2500 classifications. That would require 2500 class tracks (to be reasonably efficient). If we assume 14 foot track centers, then the width of the bowl would be 6+ miles wide.
And that’s just for starters…
A few things are happening on that front here in the Chicago/NW Indiana area.
First, the NS seems to be close to purchasing land west of Laporte, In. There was a couple of articles last month on it. They would build a yard there, primarily for handling the intermodal traffic.
Second, rumors are that CSX would build a similar type yard either near Union Mills or Kingsbury. They might also build in Ohio.
Both of these would be approx 50 miles from Chicago. Land is available for both projects. There is very little land left in Chicago proper or around the belt (EJE). The last big project was BNSF’s Logistics Park south of Joliet. That entire area is filling up. My guess is that BNSF would like a “redo” on that project and make it even larger.
I dont know the efficiencies of Chicago yard operations, but the Clearing yard is pretty big. IHB has Blue Island, plus Gibson Yard in Hammond which is only for autoracks. Proviso is huge. Plus there are many smaller yards in the Chicago area.
Folks here in NW Indiana are looking at the two projects (NS and CSX) as possible econonmic booms.
ed
So how many arrival tracks would you need, given the number of trains a day that arrive/depart? How quickly can you pull a string from an arrival track, and get them to the hump yard lead?
How many cars can the quickest hump yard handle in an hour? The way I understand current technology, you have a single hump lead, and each car is automatically switched to one of the (2500 potential) class tracks. Even if you have a hump at either end, that pretty severly limits how many cars you could classify in a shift, compared to multiple hump yards. Is it possible to have two hump leads, with interconencting tracks, to shift and sort more cars? Just imagining the complicated infrastructure that would require may cause heart palpitations for the folks who have to maintain it… and the expense of maintenance would be an issue, also.
This may well be an example of why bigger is not always better…
What is your primary goal with this line of thinking?
A) that the railroads need to avoid the congestion of Chicago ?
B) that the railroads need to realize the appreciated value of land owned near city center, and cash in?
C) Increased efficiency in interchange traffic by having one central clearing house?
D) other?
For A and C I would say that if the Railroads truly wanted out of Chicago, they would have done so long before now. I think there are as many political reasons for maintaining the status quo as there are arguments against it.
For B, not all existing facilities would be in demand for redevelopment, which would result in stranded costs to the existing owners.
All progress is change, but not all change is progress.
Same line of reasoning:
- Let’s just buy one big bus and do away with all the individually owned and operated private cars, SUV’s, pickups… on this two-block stretch of residential street. Think of all the yard space if there were no separate driveways/garages.
- Instead of a Chief’s car, a small pumper, a hose truck, a ladder rig, a hazmat response vehicle and an ambulance, let’s just equip the Fire Department with one humongous do-everything watchamacallit too big to get down most residential streets - then send it out every time somebody’s pet cat gets stuck in a tree.
Note that those yards have been specialized for specific purposes as required by different owners, frequently with different or contradictory ways of doing business. Note also that old rail facilities frequently require massive infrastructure modification and overhaul before being acceptable for other uses.
I’m not saying that some shifting and rethinking might be in order. What I am saying is that the planning needs to be rather more than a shoot-from-the-hip, one size fits all process.
Chuck
Tell me about these “huge central switching yards” in New York, KC, and Atlanta. Do you really think that Oak Island handles everything to and from New York, with no help from outlying locations?
I could probably point out several yards in Chicago that are each larger than any of the yards (that’s plural) that you’ll find in the environs of any of those cities. Take just one of those yards–the one I work in–as an example. The arrival and departure tracks are busy almost continually, with trains coming in from four, maybe five, different directions and leaving on as many routes. Just how many two- and three-track routes full of trains would you have leading to/from this monster yard of yours? Or would you have large ten-track leads where a train on the far track would foul everything else while trying to get to a receiving yard?
Which railroad’s computer system would you use?
Why would one railroad that doesn’t do any locomotive repair or maintenance in Chicago want to pay a fair share for a joint facility used by another railroad for major-component-changeout?
How would the western railroads get to a location in Indiana? Over somebody else’s line, at the mercy of a dispatcher who has enough to do with his own trains? We get that problem already, thank you! Build an entire new line, leading to this new facility, and gobbling up real estate in a way that will have town planners and other assorted NIMBYs up in arms?
I don’t know where you live, I.N., but it’s obvious to me that you haven’t done much observation of railroad action around Chicago, or how each of the railroads that would be involved struggles with the constraints of its own facilities that you would like to build condos on. It may be hard to get your cars through here now, but why not let the CREATE ideas have a chance to work, and see if things improve?