What is the correct term for taking a freight train apart in a yard? Or, what is the opposite of “making up” a train?
Also, when people get off a train upon arrival, what’s the correct term? Or, what’s the opposite of “boarding” a train?
Thanks.
Switching out.
Disembarking.
Seems to be that there is no process of un-making up a train. When it comes into a yard it might be split into two or more sections based on space available, but it is not taken apart per se, the cars are taken as a group to the end of the switch yard and split apart to be made up into new trains in the process of “Making up” trains.
Passenger “deboard” a train (or ship or airplane).
In our yard, the correct term would be “humping” the train.
Jim, were you around for 40th Street? Wasn’t there a “break-up yard” down there?
As for getting off equipment, we refer to it as “getting off”. Or “bailing” or “unloading”, if there’s a little more urgency to it.
Tuck and roll ??
Duck and cover?
Carl, I do not remember much about 40th street yard. I only went there a few times, and I never had any idea where anything was. All I remember is the tracks were so close together in a few places that I could not fit between cars on adjacent tracks. Plus I always felt that I needed a weapon to feel a bit safer. Especially when driving in the neighborhood in my soft-top Jeep.
“Detrain” is time-honored and simplest, when you’re talking paying passengers and passenger trains.
I think there were two freight yards–the Break-Up and the Swamp. And yes, one of the two had those old track centers that were a squeeze for me even when I was small. I encountered it only once.
That is also the term Amtrak uses on its web page and printed material.
What is the correct term for taking a freight train apart in a yard? Or, what is the opposite of “making up” a train?
Depends on what you are going to do with the cars…you can block out the cars if they are in large groups destined for the same location you can classify cars, break it into groups that either need blocking or switching, or switch them…all the above terms are loosely considered “switching”
Also, when people get off a train upon arrival, what’s the correct term? Or, what’s the opposite of “boarding” a train?
Off, detrain, on, entrain…both terms used in most rule books, also used to describe mounting and getting off moving freight cars.
Thanks.
Detrain. I’d forgotten about that word, and I need it every trip we make as I advise the passengers of when they can detrain. (Sometimes we need to stop to throw a switch or flag the crossing and we don’t need everyone in the vestibule simply because the train stopped…)
I should probably write it down.
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I’ve also heard and seen “break up” and “break down”, as in the opposite of “make-up”.
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“Alight”, esp. pertaining to females leaving passenger trains.
- Paul North.
I did something like that once, 56 years ago; I was riding a woodrack, and the train did not slow down when it reached my destination, so I unloaded (getting some ballast scrapes on one arm). Before and since, I stepped off, detrained, etc.
Set out, would be the most likely here for putting a train away. Take your train to such and such and set out the cars to this track and tie down power at the house, garden, or wherever. Put away is also used here. Usually when you are given a train that terminates at a terminal you are told what tracks to put the train in, or what tracks to set out the train in. Regionally specific terminology would apply a lot of the time.
One “boards” a train and exits it by “leaving” it. Although I’m partial to the word Paul North suggested above: passengers “alight” from a train.
Coupling cars together for purposes of moving them along a main track is called “building” a train. Upon arrival at final destination the remaining cars are “busted up” (a crude term), “switched out” or “classified” into classification, storage, company business, rip, and interchange tracks.
In the Norfolk-Southern description of a conductor’s job duties listed on their website the term is “break-up”.
The PC used to call it a derailment. [:-,]
40th Street Yard and the connection north over the Cragin and Weber industrial branches are gone. There’s still a little bit of industry work at the south end of what used to be 40th Street (and why did they call it that? It’s right off of Pulaski). The engine facility at M-19A is still there and in regular use doing maintenance work on Metra F-40 engines and UP freight power. The two big coaling towers were torn down about three years ago, and the turntable was taken out at the beginning of last year. The Weber and Cragin both still branch off from Mayfair (the tower there has been gone for about 12 years or so; ops are remoted to CY Tower), but the Cragin no longer connects with 40th Street and the Weber no longer goes as far as Canal in Evanston. Yeah, I’ve heard war stories about that area and you aren’t the first to tell me how close the clearances were in that yard. FWIW, the old steam shop with the overhead crane is still standing but no longer in railroad use.
Ya see, what I mean…never ever mix Benadryl with prescription medicines…[:-^]
[(-D] [tup] But, no - that’s just what they called it when it happened out on the main tracks . . . [:-^]
- Paul North.