What are these?

[cncproadwarrior]

Scales maybe?

 

[BIG-D]

i beleieve and somebody correct me if im wrong that this is a hump yard and those are the breaking "machienes" for the downhill side of the hump

 

[lmackattack]

yes that is a hump yard and those things control the speed of the cars rolling down the hill.

 

[Trouble]

yeah, those are retarders. make a god awful screeching noise, somewhere between ripping steel and a dentist's drill

 

[BIG-D]

thats what their called got to rember that 4 next time

 

[fiend540]

We have a hump yard here in Buffalo and it is neat watching the cars get sorted through it. Unfortunately it's days may be number as it was due to have a major overhaul of the control system but that has been put on hold. Now there are rumors CSX wants to knock it down in favor of a flat switching yard.

 

[UP2CSX]

Cory, I think you'll see a lot of hump yards disappear in the next decade. They worked fine when most cars were about the same size and same wieght, and the clearance above the tracks was the same. With so many different sizes and weights of cars, it's becoming more and more expensive to maintain the hydraulic retarder systems. The computer systems needed to trigger just the right amount of retardation for all the different sizes and weights of cars is also becoming a nightmare. With the advent of radio controlled switchers, it's much less expensive to use R/C locos to sort out cars than to rely on an old and failing system.

 

[MGWSY]

Actually hump yards are the quickest at switching out cars but the reason that many are shutting down is that the traffic isn't there. Also with a lot of mergers the rr's see which yards are not operating at peak performance and shifting trains to those yards to keep them running at 90% or better as 2 hump yards separated by 200 - 300 miles working at 40% carloads make no sense so the usually close one down and shift the traffic to the other one.

Also todays RR's focus more and more on unit trains so hump yards just aren't needed everywhere as most Class ones have purged themselves of many branch lines so instead of switching out cars for each customer they make blocks for whatever short line runs the branch now and they switch them out per customer in their own yard.

The computer system for hump yards works fine with any weight of cars as you can have an empty car going over then a fully loaded plastic hopper with no difference at all as the cars are weighed and the computer determines what track it is going to, what is there, and estimates the speed at which the car should go controlling it at that range. Yes some cars stop sooner in the bowl so every now and then the trim locos would go and pull everything down.

 

[kenw]

Here's what they look like in Houston's Englewood (ex SP) Yard. The retarders are the dark brown lines on either side of the tracks. Note there are 2 sets: the 8 primary ones and then the (bunches) secondary or final ones on each individual track.

The squealing is 24x7 here. Every few years someone gets all bothered about the noise and complains. Then they move away and some other idiot moves in.... At one point there were 3 sets of hump engines, each set was a pair of de-turbo'd SD40-2 sandwiching a remote master cobbled from the old SP B-B slugs.

Note that Wayside Drive goes UNDER the hump lead and OVER some of the other tracks. The main track that goes perpendicular to the hump (and is just out of the pic to the right of Wayside Dr) is actually the southern yard lead for Settegast Yard (ex MP). BNSF uses this line as a route around the NE part of Houston.

Railfan Mecca!

 

[UP2CSX]

Man, that is one heck of a gigantic bowl. I can sure see why so many cars are covered in grafitti. It seems like almost an impossible task to provide enough security keep trespassers out a yard that size.

 

[iomalley]

Cory, I think you'll see a lot of hump yards disappear in the next decade. <<snip>> With the advent of radio controlled switchers, it's much less expensive to use R/C locos to sort out cars than to rely on an old and failing system.

True. RR accountants put too much substance in their humps. CN's mac yard is so scrutinized that they have a 'slush' track where they throw cars only to push them over the hump again to (a) get a full shift for the hump crew and (b) falsely get the 'cars processed' numbers up for the accounting dept. In London, where I worked as a yard helper, the Toronto train brought unsorted cars for us to flat switch. They all went over the hump, but NONE were sorted! Ours is a kick yard, so they knew we could do as quick a job.

The squealing is 24x7 here. Every few years someone gets all bothered about the noise and complains. Then they move away and some other idiot moves in....

I'm not sure what yard it was, (CP's Agincourt maybe?) but they built sheds over the retarders to (a) reduce rain/snow fouling and (b) keep the noise down. The worst are the mechanical retarders at the end of the classification tracks, they're to catch cars that may run down the length of the yard. They make my skin crawl!