A rail yard railway yard or railroad yard is the US term for a complex series of railroad tracks for storing, sorting, or loading/unloading, railroad cars and/or locomotives. Railroad yards have many tracks in parallel for keeping rolling stock stored off the mainline, so that they do not obstruct the flow of traffic. Railroad cars are moved around by specially designed yard switchers, a type of locomotive. Cars in a railroad yard may be sorted by numerous categories, including railroad company, loaded or unloaded, destination, car type, or whether they need repairs. Railroad yards are normally built where there is a need to store cars 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.[1]:46 Many railway yards are located at strategic points on a main line. Main line yards are often composed of an Up yard and a Down yard, linked to the associated railroad direction. There are different types of yards, and different parts within a yard, depending on how they are built. Explore the history of freight transportation from its humble beginnings as tramways in mines to complex system of rails that stretches to every corner of the nation. n 2004, there were 59 different freight lines operating in Pennsylvania – the most railroads in any of the United States. In the United States, between 1890 and 1917, 230,000 railroad employees were killed and over two million injured on the job. In 1920, over two million workers kept the U.S. railroads running. By 2004, the number was only 177,000. In 1965, just over 1.6 million trailers and containers were shipped by rail. Four decades later, the number has increased to almost 11 million.

• published: 28 Oct 2014
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