Staging yard

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

While on a trip around Chicago, I passed a large staging yard while on I-294. Had many CP engines and was a monster sized yard. Would loved to have taken photos, but really impossible.

Anyone have info about the place?

Thanks.

2

Probably the Bensenville yard

http://www8.cpr.ca/cms/English/Customers/Existing+Customers/Facilities/Intermodal/Bensenville+Intermodal+Terminal.htm?Pro=Intermodal

3

Definitely Bensenville which was originally Milwuakee Road and now Soo LIne.

Mark

4

As the others have said Bensenville Yard, now CP owned, was the cleanest railyard I had ever been to as a conductor. No brake shoes, trash, scrap metal, nothing except ballast. In my limited experience as a conductor going into Bensenville I have nothing but good things to say about that facility.

5

Isn’t a “staging yard” a hidden set of tracks on a model railroad used to simulate “beyond the basement” traffic/destinations (by “staging” trains)? IINM the prototype call their car sorting facilities “classification yards” (and to confuse this further a yard on the “modeled” part of a scale RR isn’t called a staging yard either)…

6

Back during MILW’s ownership of that yard, I remember always looking for the yard tower when we’d pass-over on the interstate. That was where I was most likely to see MILW locomotives stopped. It was just to the west of the interstate, and I believe it was a two-story affair.

When my mom and I passed-through Bensenville Yard on Metra last week, I saw the tower wasn’t there anymore. Might you know when the yard tower (office?) was demolished?

7

Raebel,

Thanks for the info!

8

That’s correct, railroads call a yard such as Bensenville a classification yard, or “class yard” for short. But the prototype does have staging yards, particularly in the vicinity of ports, where arriving trains are staged for slots in the port. Sometimes we also call these “chambering yards.”

There are also run-through yards, block-swapping yards, and marshalling yards:

  1. Run-through yards are typically those used for inspecting and fueling trains that are not classified such as unit trains and intermodal trains, including bad-order setouts and makeups.
  2. Block-swapping yards are common in double-stack intermodal, where for instance a train from Los Angeles carrying blocks for Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Memphis, and Chicago swaps blocks with a similar train so the Dallas, Atlanta, and Memphis blocks all leave on one train and the Chicago blocks leave on the other.
  3. Marshalling yards used to be common in the loose-car coal business, where empties are received, serviced, and marshalled into mine runs.

Inside a classification yard, you’ll often find an arrival yard, departure yard (often combined), the bowl tracks if it’s a hump yard or the class tracks if it’s flat-switched, and sometimes the classification tracks are separated into eastbound and westbound, or (northbound and southbound) yards. There are specialty yards inside many yards dedicated to coal, intermodal, or in the old days perishables.

RWM