The yardmaster is a railroad employee in charge of a rail yard. Duties involve managing and coordinating all activities in combining rolling stock into trains, breaking down trains into individual railroad cars, and switching trains from track to track in the rail yard. [1] In the United States of America, yardmasters are eligible to join the Railroad Yardmasters of America.
A conductor or guard is a train crew member responsible for operational and safety duties that do not involve actual operation of the train/locomotive. The conductor title is most common in North American railway operations, but the role is common worldwide under various job titles. In Commonwealth English, a conductor is also known as guard or train manager.
The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States. Headquartered in Atlanta, the company was formed in 1982 with the merger of the Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. The company operates 19,420 route miles in 22 eastern states, the District of Columbia, and has rights in Canada over the Albany to Montréal route of the Canadian Pacific Kansas City. Norfolk Southern Railway is the leading subsidiary of the Norfolk Southern Corporation.
A siding, in rail terminology, is a low-speed track section distinct from a running line or through route such as a main line, branch line, or spur. It may connect to through track or to other sidings at either end. Sidings often have lighter rails, meant for lower speed or less heavy traffic, and few, if any, signals. Sidings connected at both ends to a running line are commonly known as loops; those not so connected may be referred to as single-ended or dead-end sidings, or stubs.
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 railroads and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers.
The Chicago Rail Link is a shortline switching railroad in Illinois. It owns and operates more than 72 miles of track on the South Side of Chicago. It is owned by OmniTRAX.
Shunting, in railway operations, is the process of sorting items of rolling stock into complete trains, or the reverse. In the United States this activity is known as switching.
A brakeman is a rail transport worker whose original job was to assist the braking of a train by applying brakes on individual wagons. The advent of through brakes, brakes on every wagon which could be controlled by the driver, made this role redundant, although the name lives on, for example, in the United States where brakemen carry out a variety of functions both on the track and within trains.
Union Railroad is a Class III switching railroad located in Allegheny County in Western Pennsylvania. The company is owned by Transtar, Inc., which is a subsidiary of Fortress Transportation and Infrastructure Investors, after being acquired from U.S. Steel in 1988. The railroad's primary customers are the three plants of the USS Mon Valley Works, the USS Edgar Thomson Steel Works, the USS Irvin Works and the USS Clairton Works.
The Fort Eustis Military Railroad is an intra-plant United States Army rail transportation system existing entirely within the post boundaries of the United States Army Transportation Center and Fort Eustis (USATCFE), Fort Eustis, Virginia. It has served to provide railroad operation and maintenance training to the US Army and to carry out selected material movement missions both within the post and in interchange with the US national railroad system via a junction at Lee Hall, Virginia. It consists of 31 miles (50 km) of track broken into three subdivisions with numerous sidings, spurs, stations and facilities.
The U.S. Military Railroad (USMRR) was established by the United States War Department as a separate agency to operate any rail lines seized by the government during the American Civil War. An Act of Congress of 31 January 1862 authorized President Abraham Lincoln to seize control of the railroads and telegraph for military use in January 1862. In practice, however, the USMRR restricted its authority to Southern rail lines captured in the course of the war. As a separate organization for rail transportation the USMRR is one of the predecessors of the modern United States Army Transportation Corps.
A freight conductor is a person who is employed by a railroad. The freight conductor is the lead employee assigned to a freight train, and is responsible for the smooth operation of the assignment, which includes reviewing schedules and maintaining communication with the train's crew members.
The Northeast Operating Rules Advisory Committee (NORAC) is a body of railroads that establish a set of operating rules for railroads in North America. The NORAC rulebook is used by full and associate member railroads, located mostly in the Northeast United States.
Automatic block signaling (ABS), spelled automatic block signalling or called track circuit block (TCB) in the UK, is a railroad communications system that consists of a series of signals that divide a railway line into a series of sections, called blocks. The system controls the movement of trains between the blocks using automatic signals. ABS operation is designed to allow trains operating in the same direction to follow each other in a safe manner without risk of rear-end collision.
The main line, or mainline in American English, of a railway is a track that is used for through trains or is the principal artery of the system from which branch lines, yards, sidings, and spurs are connected. It generally refers to a route between towns, as opposed to a route providing suburban or metro services. It may also be called a trunk line, for example the Grand Trunk Railway in Canada, the Trunk Line in Norway, and the Trunk Line Bridge No. 237 in the United States.
The Switchmen's Union of North America (SUNA) was a labor union formed in October 1894 that represented the track switch operators and people who coupled railway cars in railway yards in the United States and Canada. It became part of the United Transportation Union in 1969.
ExpressRail is a network of on- or near-dock rail yards supporting intermodal freight transport at the major container terminals of the Port of New York and New Jersey. The development of dockside trackage and rail yards for transloading has been overseen by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which works in partnership with other public and private stakeholders. As of 2019, four ExpressRail facilities were in operation, with a total built capacity of 1.5 million lifts.
The Harvey train collision took place on October 12, 1979, when the Shawnee train operated by Amtrak between Carbondale and Chicago Union Station crashed into a parked Illinois Central Gulf freight train, leading to the death of two crew members.
Northup Avenue Yard is a rail yard located in Providence and Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in the United States. The location has been the site of a rail yard since at least 1899. It was significantly expanded by the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad between 1918 and 1921 and made into a hump yard. The hump was removed around 1970, after Penn Central Transportation Company took over the New Haven in 1969. Under Penn Central, the yard was downsized and the hump removed. Conrail superseded Penn Central in 1976 and sold off the yard to the Providence and Worcester Railroad in 1982.
Duties: Manage and coordinate the activities involved in making and breaking up trains and switching trains from track to track in railroad yards ...
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