A goods station (also known as a goods yard or goods depot) or freight station is, in the widest sense, a railway station where, either exclusively or predominantly, goods (or freight), such as merchandise, parcels, and manufactured items, are loaded onto or unloaded off of ships or road vehicles and/or where goods wagons are transferred to local sidings. [1]
A station where goods are not specifically received or dispatched but simply transferred on their way to their destination between the railway and another means of transport, such as ships or lorries, may be referred to as a transshipment station. This often takes the form of a container terminal and may also be known as a container station.
Goods stations were more widespread in the days when the railways were common carriers and were often converted from former passenger stations whose traffic had moved elsewhere. [1]
The world's first dedicated goods terminal was the 1830 Park Lane Goods Station at the South End Liverpool Docks. Built in 1830 the terminal was reached by a 1.24-mile (2 km) tunnel from Edge Hill in the east of the city. The station was a part of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which was also a first being the first inter-city railway.
Goods stations may be located:
Where individual goods wagons are dispatched to specific goods stations, they are usually delivered to special shunting stations or marshalling yards where they are sorted and then collected. Sometimes there are combined shunting and goods stations.
A goods station is usually equipped with a large number of storage and loading sidings in order to fulfil its task. On the loading sidings there may be fixed facilities, such as cranes or conveyor belts, or temporary equipment, such as wheeled ramps for the loading of sugar beet.
Stations where the primary purpose of the station is the handling of containers are also known as container terminals (CT). They are equipped with special cranes and fork-lift vehicles for loading containers from lorries or ships onto the railway vehicles, or vice versa.
If only a small section of a station is used for the loading and unloading of goods, it may be referred to as the "loading area" or "loading dock" and has its own access and signposting. Often there are no facilities for loading and the individual firm has to organise its own loading equipment such as conveyor belts or lorry cranes.
Such loading areas were mainly to be found on branch lines, narrow gauge railways and at smaller stations.
Medium-sized and larger goods stations usually have marshalling or shunting sidings to enable trains to be divided amongst the various local loading and sorting sidings and industrial branches, at the same time performing the function of a small railway hub. In many European countries they are also equipped with a hump yard.
Due to the increasing amount of goods traffic that has switched from rail to road many goods stations and, in consequence marshalling yards, closed and were often eventually demolished, so that reviving rail services at the same location is no longer possible. In combined goods and hub stations with a hump yard, the latter was closed if the station lost its role as a railway hub, whilst the local goods function was retained. In addition, in most countries, part-load or parcel goods services have been entirely transferred to the roads, which has led to the closure of goods sheds as well as most of the public loading sidings and ramps used by smaller customers. As a result, most of the remaining goods stations today are just used as container or transshipment stations.
In German-speaking countries, various terms for goods station are used including Güterbahnhof in Germany (abb: Gbf) and Switzerland (abb: GB), Frachtenbahnhof (Fbf) in Austria; Umschlagbahnhof (Ubf) for transshipment station and Containerbahnhof or Containerterminal (CT) for container station or terminal.
In French : gare aux marchandises or gare de fret.
A container crane is a type of large dockside gantry crane found at container terminals for loading and unloading intermodal containers from container ships.
A rail yard, railway yard, railroad yard (US) or simply yard, is a series of tracks in a rail network for storing, sorting, or loading and unloading rail vehicles and locomotives. Yards have many tracks in parallel for keeping rolling stock or unused locomotives stored off the main line, so that they do not obstruct the flow of traffic. Cars or wagons are moved around by specially designed yard switcher locomotives (US) or shunter locomotives (UK), a type of locomotive. Cars or wagons in a yard may be sorted by numerous categories, including railway company, loaded or unloaded, destination, car type, or whether they need repairs. Yards are normally built where there is a need to store rail vehicles while they are not being loaded or unloaded, or are waiting to be assembled into trains. Large yards may have a tower to control operations.
Rail freight transport is the use of railways and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers.
Tinsley was a railway marshalling yard near Tinsley in Sheffield, England, used to separate railway wagons from incoming trains and add them to new trains. It was sited immediately west of the M1 motorway, about one mile north of the Catcliffe junction. It was opened in 1965, as a part of a major plan to rationalise all aspects of the rail services in the Sheffield area; it closed in stages from 1985, with the run-down of rail freight in Britain. It was also the site of Tinsley Traction Maintenance Depot (TMD), which was closed in 1998; at its peak, 200 locomotives were allocated to this depot.
The railways in Germany use several abbreviations to differentiate between various types of stations, stops, railway facilities and other places of rail service.
A goods shed is a railway building designed for storing goods before, after, and during loading to and unloading from a train. A typical goods shed will have a track running through it to allow goods wagons to be unloaded under cover, although sometimes they were built alongside a track with possibly just a canopy over the door. There will also be a door to move goods to or from road wagons and vans, this sometimes is parallel to the rail track, or sometimes on the side opposite the rail track. Inside the shed will generally be a platform and sometimes a small crane to allow easier loading and unloading of wagons.
SBB Cargo is a subsidiary of Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) specialising in railfreight and is operated as the Freight division. Swiss Federal Railways is a former state-owned and -controlled company that was transformed in 1999 into a joint-stock company under special legislation following the first Swiss railway reform and divided up into three independent divisions: Passenger, Freight and Infrastructure. The headquarters of Swiss Federal Railways SBB Cargo AG, the Freight division's official designation, are in Olten. In 2013, SBB Cargo had 3,061 employees and achieved consolidated sales of CHF 953 million. In Switzerland, SBB Cargo is the market leader in rail freight, transporting over 175,000 tons of goods every day. This corresponds to the weight of 425 fully loaded jumbo jets.
The rail network of Melbourne, Australia, has a significant number of railway lines and yards serving freight traffic. Rail transport in Victoria is heavily focused on Melbourne, and, as a consequence, much of the state's rail freight passes through the metropolitan network.
Transloading, also known as cross-docking, is the process of transferring a shipment from one mode of transportation to another. It is most commonly employed when one mode cannot be used for the entire trip, such as when goods must be shipped internationally from one inland point to another. Such a trip might require transport by truck to an airport, then by airplane overseas, and then by another truck to its destination; or it might involve bulk material loaded to rail at the mine and then transferred to a ship at a port. Transloading is also required at railroad break-of-gauge points, since the equipment can not pass from one track to another unless bogies are exchanged.
The term shipping terminal may apply to facilities where loading and unloading of people or goods takes place:
The Cambridge Branch is a rural railway line in the Waikato, New Zealand. The line stretches from Ruakura Junction for 15.08 kilometres (9.37 mi) to the settlement of Hautapu, having previously continued another 4.19 kilometres (2.60 mi) to the township of Cambridge. It had five stations along its length, at Newstead, Matangi (Tamahere), Bruntwood (Fencourt), Hautapu and the terminus at Cambridge.
A train station, railroad station, or railroad depot and railway station is a railway facility where trains stop to load or unload passengers, freight, or both. It generally consists of at least one platform, one track, and a station building providing such ancillary services as ticket sales, waiting rooms, and baggage/freight service. Stations on a single-track line often have a passing loop to accommodate trains travelling in opposite direction.
Shalimar rail yard served as a terminus for goods trains and hosted a rail yard since its inception in 1883. In recent years, it has been brought into the network of passenger train stations, developing into Shalimar Station, to reduce pressure on Howrah Station. Apart from suburban trains, few long-distance trains have been introduced or moved over here. It is under Kharagpur railway division. Shalimar still serves as an important transshipment point in Kolkata. Shalimar also has port side domestic container terminals. An additional container terminal is also proposed there.
Maschen Marshalling Yard near Maschen south of Hamburg on the Hanover–Hamburg railway in Germany is the largest marshalling yard in Europe, its size only being exceeded worldwide by the Bailey Yard in the US state of Nebraska.
Leipzig-Wahren station is a station in the Leipzig suburb of Wahren in the German state of Saxony. At the beginning of the 20th century, a large freight yard was developed at it. Until the end of marshalling of trains on 31 December 1994, the Leipzig-Wahren freight yard was along with Engelsdorf one of the two major marshalling yards in the Leipzig rail node.
Dresden-Friedrichstadt station is a freight yard that is, along with the two passenger stations of Dresden Hauptbahnhof and Dresden-Neustadt, a central component of the railway node of Dresden in the German state of Saxony. The station precinct, which is located in the Dresden district of Friedrichstadt, also includes a locomotive depot and a regional passenger station.
Healey Mills Marshalling Yard was a railway marshalling yard located in the village of Healey, south west of Ossett in West Yorkshire, England. The yard was opened in 1963 and replaced several smaller yards in the area. It was part of the British Transport Commission's Modernisation plan, and so was equipped with a hump to enable the efficient shunting and re-ordering of goods wagons. The yard lost its main reason for existence through the 1970s and 1980s when more trains on the British Rail system became block trains where their wagons required less, or more commonly, no shunting.
Basford Hall Yard is a railway marshalling yard near the town of Crewe, Cheshire, England. The yard, which is 0.93 miles (1.5 km) south of Crewe railway station, was opened in 1901 by the London and North Western Railway (LNWR). Initially used to marshal trains, the site now acts as a hub mainly for Freightliner intermodal trains, but also houses departmental sidings as used by Freightliner Heavy Haul, and other operators. For a period in the 1930s, Basford Hall was the busiest marshalling yard in Europe, handling between 28,000 and 47,000 wagons every week.