The intricacy of tracks and the “throat” of a modern terminal yard:
South Station, Boston, and its approaches
You speak of his yard as being overwhelmingly big. He answers in his deliberate way:
“We’ve more than 200 miles of track in this yard; something more than 2,000 switches operate it.”
Then he takes you down from his office, elevated in an abandoned switch-tower, and looking down upon his domain. He explains with great care that, his yard being a main-line division point and not a point with many intersecting branches or “foreign roads,” its transfer-house is inconsequential. The same process that goes forward with the package-freight in the transfer-houses, Randall carries on in this yard with cars. These operations are separated for east-bound and west-bound freight and each is given an entirely separate yard, easily reached from the group of roundhouses that hold the freight motive power of that part of the system. Randall’s, being an unusually large yard, further divides these activities into separate yards for loaded and empty cars on the west-bound side. No east-bound “empties” are handled over his road.
We follow him to the nearest operating point, the west-bound classification yard for loaded cars. In the old days this was a broad flat reach of about 20 parallel tracks, terminating at each end in approaches of lead of “ladder” track. Upon each set of 3 or 4 tracks a switch-engine is busy in the eternal classification process. In these more modern days you may see the “hump” or gravity-yard, although you will still find skilled railroaders who are prejudiced against its use. In the hump-yard half of the work of the switch-engines is done by gravity. This new type of railroad facility has an artificial hill, just above the termination of the parallel tracks where they cluster together, and upon this hump one switch-engine with a trained crew does the work of six engines and crews in the old type of yard.
A preference freight rolls into the receiving yard for the west-bound classification. Its engine uncouples and steams off for a well-earned rest in the smoky roundhouse. A switch-engine uncouples the caboose that has been tacked on behind over the division, and it is shunted off to the near-by caboose track, where its crew will have close oversight of it—perhaps sleep in it—until it is ready to accompany some east-bound freight a few hours hence.
Blue flags (blue lights at night) are fastened at each end of the dismantled cars, and the inspectors have a quarter of an hour to make sure if the equipment is in good order. If the car is found with broken running-gear it is marked, and soon after drilled out from its fellows, sent to the transfer-house to have its contents removed, to the shops for repairs, or the “cripple” track for junk, if its case is well-nigh hopeless.
With the “O. K.” of the car inspectors finally pronounced, the train that was comes up to the hump, and the expert crew that operates there makes short work of sorting out the cars—this track for “stuff” southwest of Pittsburgh, this next for Cleveland and Chicago, the third for transcontinental; and so it goes. Two lines of cars are drilled at the same time, for just ahead of the switch-engine is an open-platform car, known as the “pole-car,” and by means of heavy timbers the “pole-man” guides two rows of heavy cars down the slight grades to their resting-places.
The cars do not rest long upon the classification-yard tracks. From the far end of each of these they are being gathered in solid trains, one for Pittsburgh, another for Cleveland and Chicago, the third transcontinental, and so on. Engines of the next division are being hitched to them, pet “hacks” brought from the caboose tracks, and the long strings of loaded box-cars are off toward the West in incredibly short time.