Classification yard

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North Yard in Denver, Colorado, a typical U.S. classification yard in 2009
Chicago and North Western Railway's Proviso Yard in Chicago, Illinois, December 1942.

A classification yard (American and Canadian English) or marshalling yard (British, Indian English and Canadian English) is a railroad yard found at some freight train stations, used to separate railroad cars on to one of several tracks. First the cars are taken to a track, sometimes called a lead or a drill. From there the cars are sent through a series of switches called a ladder onto the classification tracks. Larger yards tend to put the lead on an artificially built hill called a hump to use the force of gravity to propel the cars through the ladder.

Freight trains that consist of isolated cars must be made into trains and divided according to their destinations. Thus the cars must be shunted several times along their route in contrast to a unit train, which carries, for example, automobiles from the plant to a port, or coal from a mine to the power plant. This shunting is done partly at the starting and final destinations and partly (for long-distance-hauling) in classification yards.


There are three types of classification yards: flat-shunted yards, hump yards and gravity yards.

Flat yards[edit]

Flat yards are constructed on flat ground, or on a gentle slope. Freight cars are pushed by a locomotive and coast to their required location.[1]

CNW towerman R. W. Mayberry operates the retarders at Proviso Yard in Chicago, Illinois, May 1943.

Hump yards[edit]

Not all cars can be sent over a classification hump. This Union Pacific track maintenance vehicle is permanently labeled DO NOT HUMP, because it is not a freight car and is not meant to be handled like one.

These are the largest and most effective classification yards, with the largest shunting capacity, often several thousand cars a day. The heart of these yards is the hump — a lead track on a small hill over which an engine pushes the cars. Single cars, or a block of coupled cars, are uncoupled just before or at the crest of the hump, and roll by gravity onto their destination tracks in the tracks where the cars are sorted, called the classification bowl.[2]

The speed of the cars rolling down from the hump into the classification bowl must be regulated according to whether they are full or empty, heavy or light freight, varying number of axles, whether there are few or many cars on the classification tracks, and varying weather conditions, including temperature, wind speed and direction. As concerns speed regulation, there are two types of hump yards — without or with mechanisation by retarders. In the old non-retarder yards braking was usually done in Europe by railroaders who laid skates[clarification needed] onto the tracks, or in the United States by riders on the cars. In the modern retarder yards this work is done by mechanized "rail brakes" called retarders. They are operated either pneumatically or hydraulically. Pneumatic systems are prevalent in the United States, France, Belgium, Russia and China, while hydraulic systems are used in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.

Classification bowls in Europe typically consist of 20 to 40 tracks, divided into several fans or balloons of tracks, usually with eight classification tracks following a retarder in each one, often 32 tracks altogether. In the United States, many classification bowls have more than 40 tracks — up to 72 — which are often divided into six to ten classification tracks in each balloon loop.

Bailey Yard in North Platte, Nebraska, United States, the world's largest classification yard, is a hump yard. Other large American hump yards include Argentine Yard in Kansas City, Kansas, the second-largest in the world, Robert Young Yard in Elkhart, Indiana, Clearing Yard in Chicago, Illinois, Englewood Yard in Houston, Texas, and Waycross Rice Yard in Waycross, Georgia. Notably, in Europe, Russia and China, all major classification yards are hump yards. Europe's largest hump yard is that of Maschen near Hamburg, Germany; it is only slightly smaller than Bailey Yard. The second largest is in the port of Antwerp, Belgium. Most hump yards are single yards with one classification bowl, but some, mostly very large, hump yards have two of them, one for each direction, thus are double yards, such as the Maschen, Antwerp, Clearing, and Bailey yards. According to the PRRT&HS PRR Chronology, the first hump yard in the United States was opened May 11, 1903 as part of the Altoona Yards at Bells Mills (East Altoona).

However, due to the transfer of freight transport from rail to road and the containerization of rail freight transport [clarification needed] for economic reasons, hump yards are generally in decline.[citation needed] In Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Japan and Australia, for example, all hump yards have already been closed.[citation needed]

Gravity yards[edit]

These are operated similarly to hump yards but, in contrast to the latter, the whole yard is set up on a continuous falling gradient and there is less use of shunting engines. Typical locations of gravity yards are places where it was difficult to build a hump yard due to the topography. Most gravity yards were built in Germany and Great Britain, sometimes also in some other European countries, for example Łazy yard near Zawiercie on the Warsaw-Vienna Railway (in Poland). In the USA, there were only very few old gravity yards; one of the few gravity yards in operation today is CSX's Readville Yard south of Boston, Massachusetts. The largest active gravity yard is Nürnberg (Nuremberg) Rbf (Rbf: Rangierbahnhof, "classification yard"), Germany. Gravity yards also have a very large capacity but they need more staff than hump yards and thus they are the most uneconomical classification yards.[clarification needed]

A switch engine pushes a car over the hump at Kornwestheim yard 
The retarders grip the sides of the wheels on passing cars to slow them down. 
Hump yard operation in Vienna, Austria (video) 
Kijfhoek, Netherlands, seen from 1,000 feet (305 m). Hump is at upper right. 
Hydraulic "Dowty retarders" allow fine adjustment of speed. 

See also[edit]


  1. ^ James T. Kneafsey. "Major Problems of Railroad Service". Transportation Economic Analysis. Lexington Books. p. 138. ISBN 0669932116. 
  2. ^ "ABC's of Railroading: Terms of the trade". Trains (Waukesha, Wisconsin: Kalmbach Publishing): p 22. June 1991. ISSN 0041-0934. 
  • International Railway Journal (IRJ), New York. Special editions about hump yards in various countries: issues II/66, II/70, VI/75, II/80.
  • Armstrong, John H. (1998). The Railroad: What It Is, What It Does (4th ed.). Omaha, NE: Simmons-Boardman. ISBN 978-0-911382-04-4. 
  • Rhodes, Michael: The Illustrated History of British Marshalling Yards. Sparkford: Haynes Oxford Publishing & Co, 1988. ISBN 0-86093-367-9. Out of print.
  • Kraft, Edwin: The Yard: Railroading's Hidden Half. In: Trains (vol. 62) 2002. Part I: VI/02, pp. 46–67; part II: VII/02, pp. 36–47. ISSN 0041-0934.
  • Wegner, Robert: Classification yards. Map of the Month. In: Trains IV/2003, pp. 42–43.
  • Rhodes, Michael: North American Railyards. St. Paul (USA): Motorbooks International (MBI Publishing Company) 2003. ISBN 0-7603-1578-7.

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