Sorting humps on the world's railways. The largest railway stations in the world The largest marshalling yard in Europe

In November I went north, to Ust-Luga, where one of the largest railway stations in our country (they tell me here that it is already the largest) and in Europe is located. This station serves the port of Ust-Luga. The station consists of three parks (five in the future) and one, the most modern, marshalling hump, where the loading and dismantling of trains occurs automatically.

1. A marshalling yard is needed to service cargo that arrives to or from the port. Initially, there was enormous potential for the development of the station, and it was gradually built up to gigantic proportions. Now the Podgorochny Park contains 44 paths, which makes it the largest in the territory of the former USSR.

2. We will still have to touch on the history of the port and the station itself, since without this it is difficult to assess the scale of the construction. For the first time, talk about a new port began in the early 1990s. Russia lost four of its largest ports in the north, which went to small, but very proud and independent countries. Initially, the development of the port was very mediocre, but in 2008 the global crisis suddenly attacked and... tens of billions of rubles were invested in the port and infrastructure. As a result, our country received its own modern port, a huge railway station and related infrastructure. And all this with an almost unlimited development prospect. The picture shows the state of the area in 2005. The port is in its infancy.

3. 2009 The port's finest hour has already struck and continues. Development began by leaps and bounds. A noticeable flow of traffic from the Baltic ports began and transit money began to remain in our country.

4. 2013 There is still a year until the second finest hour. In 2014, sanctions, the “Crimea” and the Ukrainian crisis spurred on - Ust-Luga became the main hub to Kaliningrad, providing stable cargo connections with the Russian enclave in the Baltic (including for defense needs), and, despite the general economic recession, cargo turnover continues to grow rapidly.

5. Modern photo from space.

Increase in cargo turnover at the port. A colossal leap in the 2010s, which continues.
2003 - 0.44 million tons.
2005 - 0.71 million tons.
2008 - 6.76 million tons.
2011 - 22.7 million tons.
2013 - 62.6 million tons.
2015 - 84 million tons.
2016 - 93.4 million tons.

6. Layout of station parks. It, of course, gives only a rough idea of ​​the scale.

7. The total development area of ​​the Ust-Luga railway junction is 930 hectares, of which 270 hectares are occupied by the sorting system of the Luzhskaya station. The total length of the Ust-Luga railway junction tracks at full development will be more than 300 km. Today, the Ust-Luga railway junction is a single railway station Luzhskaya, within its boundaries three parks have been built to service freight terminals: Luzhskaya-Severnaya, Luzhskaya-Yuzhnaya and Luzhskaya-Neftyanaya.

8. - Luzhskaya-Severnaya Park serves a coal transshipment complex, a universal transshipment complex, as well as a transshipment complex
technical sulfur.
- The Luzhskaya-Yuzhnaya park serves the Yug-2 transshipment complex, a road-railway ferry complex, and a container terminal.
- The Luzhskaya-Neftyanaya park serves a complex of oil cargo.

To service promising cargo terminals: metallurgical and mineral fertilizers, the construction of the Luzhskaya-Generalnaya park is envisaged; in addition, in the northern part of the port of Ust-Luga, the project includes the construction of the Luzhskaya-Vostochnaya park.

9. And, of course, the grandiose Luga sorting plant.

10. I will also place here this diagram, taken from periskop.su a - here the boundaries of the zone where Siemens equipment is used are marked. We’ll talk about this in more detail below, I just had questions on Instagram about how much foreign equipment there is. It occupies 20% of the total volume of the station.

11. Let's go to the control room and see how it's all controlled. Control station for the operator on the slide. The screen shows the status of tracks, retarders and other equipment. It is this workplace that is integrated with Siemens equipment.

12. Other workplaces (posts of duty officers at the reception park, transit park, departure park and station duty officer) are equipped using standard Russian Railways technologies and are located in the back of the hall. All control comes only from the screen.

13. Podgorochny Park. And the composition is fed to the slide for further sorting.

14. The duty officer at Luzhskaya station is Ainura Aliyeva.

15. Now let's look at the operation of the slide itself. After the carriages are released, under the influence of gravity, the carriages begin to roll down. By the way, this slide allows two trains to disband at the same time! Next, the car passes through special retarders, which set the interval for the cars, slow them down and provide the required speed on the sorting tracks.

16. The second (middle) braking position, in addition to intervals, provides joint regulation of the speed of rolling off the cut; the third braking position carries out targeted braking of the cut depending on the occupancy of the underhill path.

17. The most important difference between this slide and all others that operate in our country is that it is silent. Unlike pneumatic retarder drives, hydraulic ones are used here.

18. The carriages are already rolling on their way

19. Wheelset counter.

20. Retarder drive. Everything is heated by electricity.

21. The operation of the slide is fully automated. The system knows the weight of the car, the state of the weather, the rails, the strength of the wind and its direction. The control system takes all this into account and sets the braking force in all deceleration sections.

22. In front of the park tracks there is a third deceleration stage and, on some tracks, additional compensator retarders.

23. They serve to dissolve dangerous goods of category II (piston retarger - in English terminology). Yes, the hump can, for the first time in Russia, sort oil and other dangerous goods of the second category

24. Radar for determining the speed of cars at dissolution.

25. Third stage of braking and additional compensators-retarders.

26. Another innovation is this mini locomotive with cable traction. It serves to push the cars to their place. They replace shunting locomotives in the sub-mountain park and reduce the time required to assemble a train by two to three times.

27. With these antennae with rollers, the cart pushes the cars by the wheel pair. It operates throughout the entire fleet of 106 cars.

28. And the station lives its own life - here comes the track equipment.

29. It’s time for me to get acquainted with the automatic operating mode of the locomotive. Now he is following me in manual control to the park under the hill.

30. Diesel locomotive driver Denis Mundinger explains how control occurs in automatic mode.

31. In 2015, for the first time in Russia, at the Luzhskaya station of the Oktyabrskaya Railway, the technology of pushing and releasing trains using a hump locomotive without the participation of a driver (in a fully automatic mode) was introduced. In September 2017, the share of work in this mode was 97.6%.

32. Under automatic control, the train is pushed and released from the hill. Changing the track and connecting to a new train for sorting. In the photo we are climbing a hill. After passing the MG2 traffic light, the driver switched the locomotive to automatic mode and then it drove on its own.

33. The diesel locomotive went to the beginning of the tracks, waited until the route was assembled, coupled with the train, pushed it onto the hill and disbanded the cars.

34. According to the rules, the driver is required to be in the cab. But he can leave his workplace. Although he usually sits and watches the process. Now that the technology is well established, intervention is very rarely required.

35. While work was going on, a second diesel locomotive passed us. He goes to help an electric locomotive that has stalled on a climb with a heavy train. The rails are wet, the electric locomotive is light, the train is heavy, and it entered the climb at low speed. The result was predictable. But it’s okay, the diesel locomotive will get everyone out now.

36. Machinist Denis Mundinger monitors the dissolution.

37. It’s very unusual to see a diesel locomotive driving itself. Sets the speed, brakes with pneumatics, regulates speed, etc.

38. When the port of Ust-Luga reaches full capacity, unloading at the Luzhskaya station will amount to more than 3,500 wagons per day.

39. Control center. By the way, in many photographs you could see the contact network. On October 18, 2017, the industrial operation of the electrified section Weymarn - Luzhskaya within the Kuzbass - North-West test site was launched.

40. Releaser. Its work cannot be automated as long as the SA-3 automatic coupler is available.

41. The display shows him the number of cars that need to be uncoupled. He uncouples it with a long poker, and the cars then roll down the hill on their own.

42. A new sorting train has arrived at the hill.

43. Podgorochny Park. A colossal amount of work done in a short period of time, where there was nothing.

44. And our locomotive went after the next train.

45. General view of sorting in early autumn. From the ground this scale is not visible at all.

Many thanks to the press service of Russian Railways and the Oktyabrskaya Railway for organizing the shooting.

At the beginning of the year they wrote to me on Twitter: “If you’re in Leipzig, stop by the station.” I don’t consider myself an ardent railway fan, but I’ve put this matter aside in my head. Then, while in the city itself, I walked past the station building three times, but somehow it did not inspire me to go inside. Yes, the beautiful style comes from the early 20th century. Yes, there is now also a shopping center there. But somehow I was more worried about the tram hub at its doors than the station itself.

However, the fourth time I decided to go inside and, it seems, I quietly grunted from the scale.

The station was opened in 1915, during the dawn of the railways. Leipzig Hauptbahnhof belongs to the highest category of German train stations and has 21 railway tracks (2 of which are underground). The station is considered the largest in terms of area (83,640 m²) in Europe, although in terms of passenger traffic it is only 12th among German long-distance stations.

The city's old station could not cope with the rapid population growth, so an architectural competition was announced in 1906. A total of 76 architects participated, but first place was shared by the projects of Jürgen Kröger from Berlin and Walter William Lossow with Max Hans Kühne from Dresden. After minor adjustments, the version of the Saxon architects was adopted as the basic plan.

The station was supposed to be completed in 1914, but the workers' strikes of 1911 disrupted this plan. At the time of its opening, Leipzig station had 31 railway tracks and was one of the largest in the world. The construction cost 137.05 million marks, of which 54.53 million went to Saxony, 55.66 million to Prussia, 5.76 million to the Imperial Post, and 21.1 million to the city of Leipzig.

One of the main features of the station was its administrative and logistical division between the Prussian and Saxon railways until 1934: the western part of the station was considered “Prussian”, and the eastern part was considered “Saxon”.

During World War II, the station was the target of Allied air strikes at least twice: on December 4, 1943, the freight station and rolling stock were completely destroyed, and on July 7, 1944, the massive vaults of the western part of the building collapsed. At the same time, the station continued its work, closing only from April to May 1945.

In 1954, after urgent work to clear the rubble, the GDR authorities decided to completely restore the station.

After the reunification of Germany, Leipzig and Cologne train stations became pilot projects to transform station buildings into multifunctional transport and shopping complexes. The decision was made in 1994, and already on November 12, 1997, a two-story shopping center and parking on the site of tracks 24-26 appeared at the station.

In December 2013, a railway tunnel under the city center was opened in Leipzig. One of the stations is located just under the station, but that’s a slightly different story.

Today, the largest two-way marshalling yard in the world is Bailey Yard, owned by the Union Pacific railroad. The station is located in North Platte (Nebraska, USA), has a length of almost 13 km and covers an area of ​​more than 1.1 thousand hectares.

The placement of sorting devices at the station, the grouping of tracks into parks and connections are determined by historical development and local operating conditions. Large track development (114 tracks) with reserves of up to 25% ensures high throughput and processing capacity and unhindered reception of trains during peak load periods.

Every day the station handles about 10 thousand freight cars. Of these, approximately 3 thousand cars are processed at two hump sorting systems - “western” and “eastern”. When operating at maximum productivity, four cars roll down these slides every minute, which are then sent to the parks, where the final stage of train formation takes place. In total, the slides have 18 receiving and 16 departure tracks. In the repair shop, three fully equipped repair and equipment tracks allow you to perform the entire range of operations necessary for car repairs in one place. On average, 50 cars are repaired per day. In addition to repairs based on actual condition, the workshop also performs scheduled preventive inspections of rolling stock. According to current regulations, wagons must be inspected every 1,000 miles (1.6 thousand km) run. Minor repairs are carried out within 1 hour, which makes it possible to quickly return repaired cars to the train. The maximum productivity of the repair shop is 18–20 cars per hour when working in three shifts (around the clock). Traffic control throughout the station is carried out from the Bailey Command Center using modern computer technology. The station control center is directly connected to the Traffic Control Center named after. Harriman in Omaha is the main dispatch center for the Union Pacific road, controlling traffic on the entire network of this road in 23 US states. Bailey Yard is also the main production base of Union Pacific Fruit Express, a subsidiary of Union Pacific that specializes in the transportation of fresh fruits and vegetables and has a fleet of more than 5,500 refrigerated cars designed for this purpose. Maintenance and repairs of these carriages are usually also carried out at Bailey Yard. Technical control over the operation of refrigerated equipment (maintaining the required temperature), refueling, etc. is also carried out there. The placement of refueling and maintenance centers for locomotives in the western and eastern sorting systems of the station made it possible to reduce the time for preparing locomotives for departure by 12 hours. performed by 180 people. Maintenance of more than 8.5 thousand locomotive traction engines is carried out per month. On average, approximately 300 locomotives undergo maintenance per day. The station houses a locomotive repair shop - one of the largest on the Union Pacific network. Its territory is larger than the area of ​​three football fields. The number of workshop personnel is approximately 600 workers, the productivity (with round-the-clock operation) is 750 locomotives per day. The workshop has 11 tracks and is equipped with all the necessary technical means, including overhead cranes, platforms that allow working at elevated levels, etc.

In recent years, the number of coal block trains passing through Bailey Yard has increased significantly (32 per day). Such trains do not require reorganization, and at the station only the technical condition of the cars is checked, the necessary maintenance is carried out, and the locomotives are refueled. Transit (through) tracks were built at the station specifically for the passage of such trains. The share of block trains has now reached 70% of the total train traffic.

As the energy needs of the region it serves have increased, Union Pacific has built 10 additional dispatch tracks and a coal depot in the western station system, where coal cars are accumulated to form trains. The seven reserve tracks can currently accommodate up to 450 cars. It is planned to further strengthen the track development of the park, thanks to which it will be able to simultaneously accommodate up to 1.5 thousand cars.

A detector device is installed in the eastern neck of the station, which X-rays the wheels of coal train cars in order to timely detect defects. The check is carried out while the train is moving and does not require stopping the train.

In the USA, marshalling yards widely use automation systems for sorting processes, computer technology and new highly efficient mechanisms and devices: radar speedometers, electrodynamic retarders, car seaters, instruments for measuring wind speed and direction, installations for measuring the degree of track filling and controlling car retarders, high-speed turnouts etc. The use of mobile communication devices, with the help of which the processing of trains and wagons from arrival to departure is supported, is of great importance in the work of personnel. The introduction of new mobile communication systems can significantly reduce operating costs.

In recent years, in North America, at large Class I railroad marshalling yards, a transition has been made from local automation devices for individual operations to continuously operating control systems for the disbandment and formation of trains.

Thus, the Selkirk, New York, marshalling yard was designed to operate under digital computer control. The dismantling of a 150-car train, supported by automated train dismantling and hump automatic signaling systems, lasts less than 1 hour. The station's processing capacity is over 3.2 thousand cars per day. In this case, the number of wagon destinations can reach up to 70.

Selkirk station's reception fleet includes 11 tracks with a capacity of 156 cars each. As the train approaches the depot, the station attendant gives the driver the number of the receiving route, which is displayed in the cab on the control panel. At the same time, the arrival time of the train is recorded. The progress of the train is monitored by electronic sensors, based on the signals of which the switches are automatically controlled.

Checking the compliance of the arriving train with the data on the full-scale sheet is carried out using a semi-automatic television reading system. Based on the full-scale sheet and the inspection results, the computer compiles a composition sorting list, which, together with the receiving track number and code numbers of the sorting tracks, is entered into the computer that controls the dismantling process.

In the reception park, arriving trains are inspected and prepared for disbandment. The carriage number is checked as you approach the hump of the hump. If no discrepancies are found, the car is uncoupled and goes down the hill. In automatic mode, under computer control, the route for rolling it to the prescribed sorting path is established.

During the process of dismantling the car at control sections in front of the main and group brake positions, its speed is measured, and automated calculations of acceleration, rolling resistance, and friction characteristics are performed. This ensures a safe collision for wagons and cargo when coupling on the sorting track. Upon completion of the dissolution of the train, a special statement is prepared automatically and can be printed, which indicates the sorting track and the location of each of the cars on this track.

It should be noted that due to a decrease in traffic volumes on the railways of North America, the load on marshalling yards has decreased. However, Class I railways continue to modernize them in anticipation of traffic growth in the future. For example, the Chicago Belt Railway, Illinois, regularly upgrades the sorting equipment and control systems of the Bedford hump yard to achieve a maximum processing capacity of up to 3,500 cars per day.

In order to optimize the sorting process and minimize damage to cars, the PROYARD information and control system manufactured by General Electric Transportation Systems (GETS) was installed at the marshalling yards of large class I railroads in the USA and Canada. Upon arrival of wagons at the marshalling yard, automatic identification system devices read data from wagon markers, which the PROYARD system compares with those received from the transportation service, confirming or correcting them.

The cars then pass through scales and a series of sensors that measure their performance. This data is entered into the PROYARD system, as well as information about weather conditions, the slope of the hump and the distance that each car must travel before connecting with those standing on the tracks in the park. The system determines the braking power of the retarders of the three braking positions necessary to ensure the optimal speed of rolling off the cuts, which excludes premature stopping of the lowered car or damage to the cargo when it collides with a standing car at an unacceptably high speed. Inertial retarders hold the wagon couplings on the classification tracks.

Before the installation of the PROYARD system, more than half of the total number of car collisions occurred at speeds above 9.6 km/h. Once the system is put into operation, the permissible speed is not violated in 90% of cases. The number of carriage derailments caused by unacceptably high speeds has decreased by 60% over the past 15 years. During the same period, the technological process was revised and the working conditions of the station personnel were improved. As a result, the number of cars staying at the station for more than 48 hours was reduced by 75%. In addition, a set of measures taken, including the creation of a response group headed by the head of the risk management service, helped reduce the number of errors when sorting cars by 60%.

The Canadian company Canadian National has implemented the PROYARD II system to improve the productivity of the McMillan marshalling yard, located north of Toronto. This station has a hump with two thrust tracks and 76 classification tracks. Two main retarders control the speed of the released cars at the first braking position, nine group retarders (five on the western side and four on the eastern side) - at the second. The company replaced the old electromechanical retarders with new hydraulic ones from AAA Sales & Engineering.

Previously, the station processed from 1.8 thousand to 2 thousand cars per day. After modernization, the hump with two thrust tracks made it possible to increase processing to 3.2 thousand cars per day. After installation of the PROYARD II system, productivity is expected to increase to at least 3.3 thousand cars with the prospect of increasing to 4.2 thousand cars per day.

Currently, the LRC remote control system is used to supply the locomotive to the cars requiring sorting. This process is controlled by the slide operator. The locomotive pushes the cars up the hill at a speed of 24 km/h. If the connection between the cars and any transceiver located along the route along the sorting track is disrupted, the system is switched off. When the locomotive approaches the top of the hill, the transceiver transmits a command to the locomotive's computer to reduce the speed to 16 km/h.

The functions of the PROYARD II system include determining the dismantling speed depending on a number of factors, including the type of cargo in the car. Wagons with dangerous goods are lowered at a speed of about 2.8 km/h, with other goods - 4 km/h. The computer allows you to accurately determine the moment the car reaches the top of the hill and control its further movement. As a result of the introduction of a new automated system, the number of cars staying at the station for more than 2 days decreased by 75%, and the number of errors during sorting operations decreased by 60%.

Union Pacific upgrades one of its 12 rail yards each year, replacing computer systems, Automatic Railcar Identification readers, information displays and control center equipment. Thus, after modernization, the Inglewood marshalling yard in Houston processes up to 3 thousand cars daily (before modernization - 1.6–1.8 thousand cars). The station slide has a height of 17 m, three thrust paths, two of which can be used simultaneously. The marshalling yard has 64 tracks, one main and eight group retarders (each with seven or eight tracks) and 64 retarders on sections without slope.

Sorting takes place according to a certain scheme. Almost the entire process is fully automated. First, a booster section is attached to the tail of the train, which consists of two SD40-2R locomotives and an S2B booster. Despite the presence of a fuel tank, the booster does not have diesel engines and takes energy for electric traction motors from a diesel locomotive. The fuel tank is used by both diesel locomotives as an additional capacity for fuel. This allows you to work for a long time without refueling. The need for booster sections is determined solely by the weight of the train and the height of the hump, since it is impossible to manage with one shunting locomotive when pushing a train weighing 12 thousand tons onto the hump.

Each carriage is equipped with a special sensor, which is read by a computer before hitting the hill. This gives the dispatcher information about the wagon or cut, the nature of the cargo and its purpose. Next, the car is sent to the scales, then uncoupled from the train by a release mechanism and rolls down the hill onto the desired track.

When rolling, the car passes through a retarder, which reduces its speed for smooth tangential coupling. This process is controlled by a computer, which calculates the distance required to reach the clutch with the train already standing on the track, and, based on the weight of the car, calculates the required braking force in the retarders. Any hard impacts of wagons are unacceptable. Heavier trains move in reinforced sections; they have three diesel locomotives and a booster. The power of such a section is 12 thousand hp, weight - 700 tons. When the train is already assembled, a mainline locomotive is attached to the opposite side, which picks it up. At this time, on the other hand, work may continue to “add up” shunting diesel locomotives to the train of the last cars that arrived late and did not pass through the hump.

Railroad turnouts controlled from the LRC remote control. Operator with LRC system console.

In recent years, there has been a very rapid change of generations of diesel locomotives and traditional locomotives with only one diesel engine are being taken out of service. They are being replaced by a new generation of fuel-efficient diesel locomotives, both hybrids and multi-diesel units. For example, the RP20GE diesel locomotive, which replaced obsolete locomotives for shunting work, is equipped with three independent diesel engines with a common gearbox. The driver can turn on any combination of diesel engines at any time. Rated power – 2100 hp. with a constant traction force of 36 tf. There are varieties of diesel locomotive: RP20BD - with a shortened base for passing small radius curves, also with three diesel engines, and RP20BH - on the same base, but with two diesel engines and a battery.

Many diesel locomotives at stations operate without drivers and are controlled by a dispatcher. These locomotives are equipped with flashing signal lights to attract the attention of personnel on the tracks (new diesel locomotives are not marked with them, since the personnel know that they are operating under remote control). A diesel locomotive can be controlled either by a dispatcher from the control building or by a driver with a control panel located on the tracks. By the way, booster sections also work without drivers.

The company has developed a technical specification for a transportation management system, the functions of which include monitoring operations at marshalling yards. The contract for the construction of this system was awarded to Proficient Solutions International.

Training employees in the basics of operating the new control system was of great importance in increasing the productivity of the marshalling yard by 15–20%. The transition from data analysis in a text format, the only one possible when using computers of the first generations, to a graphical one, supported by software in the Windows environment, required intensive training both in terms of learning software tools and in terms of understanding new forms of data presentation, their interpretation and analysis.

Union Pacific continues to modernize its marshalling yards and plans to introduce remote control of locomotives to improve productivity through greater automation of the marshalling process. Remote control has already been put into operation at the Hinckley yard in Oregon. It is planned to introduce this system at five more stations.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe previously built the Argentine marshalling yard in Kansas City, designed to process up to 2,400 cars daily. In fact, after modernization, the processing capacity of the station is 2.6–2.9 thousand cars per day.

Each car going down the hill passes through a 42-cylinder pneumatic main retarder and six positions with 30-cylinder retarders. Switches distribute cars across 10 sorting tracks, where their speed is dampened by seven-cylinder retarders. Piston retarders reduce the speed of movement of cars to 5.6–7.2 km/h, which is required for safe coupling. Rails brake retarders help keep cars on the downhill side of the classification track.

The sorting tracks (60 tracks) have a length from 580 to 1068 m, 10 receiving and 10 departure tracks - 2440 m. The slope and length of the sorting tracks are taken into account when regulating the rolling speed of cars.

The reconstruction of the Jerry R. Davis station (USA) made it possible to increase its capacity, provide higher speed and efficiency in managing the process of disbanding cars and forming trains, while reducing operating costs and train delays. The station receives and dispatches an average of 60 trains per day.

Currently, it is a fully computerized system with one station dispatcher monitoring all technological operations performed. The station's processing capacity is 2.2 thousand cars per day. Its most important difference from other North American marshalling yards is the installation of almost 7 thousand Trackmaster point hydraulic piston retarders from the British company Ultra Dynamics Ltd.

Foreign railways are aimed at increasing the volume of processing of car flows even during a period of decline in traffic and at modernizing crucial marshalling stations in the future.

B.S. Kostyuk, General Director of Tema LLC

P.V. Kurenkov, Deputy Director of the Institute of Management and Information Technologies of MIIT for scientific work

M.A. Nekhaev, graduate student I.R. Ruvinov, graduate student

Text and photos based on materials from foreign sources

The railroad is one of the largest and most profitable businesses in the United States besides the oil industry. Every year, about 1.8 billion tons of cargo are transported by rail. The country's rail networks, some 225,000 km long, generate profits for rail companies of $54 billion a year.
But trains carrying goods do not appear out of nowhere; they need to be formed and reorganized along the route. For this task, marshalling yards exist at large junction stations along the entire length of railways.
In the state of Texas, there are two large marshalling yards owned by Union Pacific - Englewood Yard and Davidson Yard. The first station is located in Houston and is the largest in Texas. The second marshalling yard is located in Fort Worth, near Dallas. This is a relatively small station for the size of America.

1. A little about the life history of the marshalling yard. It was founded in the early 1900s and was initially not owned by the Union Pacific, but rather owned by the Texas & Pacific Railroad. After its founding, the station was named after the president of the company - Lancaster Yard.

2. The station occupied a small area and gradually grew, fortunately at that time the city of Fort Worth was very small, and there was a lot of free space around the station.

3. But if in the early 1900s there were a lot of private companies in the United States, then over time small companies began to disappear, because It became increasingly difficult to compete with the giants.

4. The Texas & Pacific Railroad suffered the same fate, and in 1963 the company was purchased by their competitor, the Missouri Pacific Railroad.

5. The new owner immediately noticed the advantageous location of the station and decided to modernize it. It was expanded, the supply of tracks was increased, and the throughput increased.

6. After everything was finished, it was decided to rename the station. And in 1971, the station was named Centennial Yard. Many older railroad workers still call the station by this name.

7. The future was not entirely rosy for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. In 1984, the company became part of Union Pacific.

8. The new owner did not modernize the station, because it met the requirements of the time. In 2007, the station received its current name "Davidson Yard" due to the return of the chairman of the board of directors, whose name is Richard Davidson.

9. An interesting fact about the station itself is that it was one of the first stations in the United States to use fiberglass instead of conventional communications cables (since 1981), and very quickly the station became the main communications hub for Union Pacific.

10. Today the station is an important railway junction in America, because All cargo from Asia, passing through the seaports of California, is sent inland.

11. All cargo flow from California has a common part of the route to Texas, after which the cargo flow must be divided, because From Texas, cargo travels in east, north and northeast directions.

12. The main flow of cargo from California is containers with various goods.

13. For example, only one container terminal, Long Beach in California, receives about 7 million containers every year, sending them inland.

14. Every day about 50 container railways. trains leave the port of Long Beach.

15. In 2009, Union Pacific began modernization of the station, which continues today. The station is being actively rebuilt to increase capacity.

16. Cargo traffic from California is increasing every year. In a few years, the station will no longer cope with the flow of cars, and now the Union Pacific company has decided to prepare the station even before it “chokes” with cargo traffic.

17. In the next 20 years, cargo traffic should double.

18. Upon completion of the project, the station will have 69 marshalling tracks, forming and sending about 100 trains every day.

19. Well, the principle of operation of the station itself is very simple. There are several parks at the station: reception, sorting, departure.

20. These three parks are located in this case parallel to each other. All trains enter the reception depot, where the mainline diesel locomotive is uncoupled from them and a shunting locomotive is attached.

21. Then the shunting diesel locomotive pulls the train “into the exhaust pocket,” or track, which allows the train to be removed from the receiving depot and redirected to further sorting tracks.

22. This path goes beyond the station, because Otherwise, it will not be possible to pull a train of almost a hundred cars.

23. After which the train begins to climb up the “hill”, which is a small artificially made elevation above the station level.

24. Once at the top of the “slide”, the cars are uncoupled, individually or in groups.

25. Uncoupled cars roll down the “slide” by inertia, forming trains.

26.

27. Dispatchers assemble “theoretical” trains on a computer in advance, even before the cars arrive at the station.

28. Thanks to pre-assembled “theoretical” trains, the process of assembling cars into trains after uncoupling is fully automated.

29. When the car starts to roll down the hill, the first thing it does is go through the scanner. On each car there is a magnetic tag, which gives the dispatcher complete information about the car (it is a tank, a covered car, a platform, etc.), destination, the nature of the cargo in it and the weight of the empty car.

30. After the scanner, the car goes to the scales, where its weight is measured, and then the computer itself determines which track this car should be sent to.

31.

32. Because the dispatcher has already compiled the “future trains”, the arrows are automatically moved by the computer and the car rolls onto the desired track.

33. On the rolling path, the car passes through special retarders, which partially dampen the speed of the car.

34. Catch-up.

35. Retarders are “brake shoes” that clamp the wheels of a car as it passes through them.

36. Why weigh the carriage? The fact is that the computer knows how many cars are already on the tracks, but you need to calculate the braking force for the retarders and slow down the car so that it has enough inertia to roll to the rest of its “brethren”, but at the same time it does not roll too fast.

37.

38. The car, depending on the load, can be slowed down to a coupling speed of 1 km/h; the typical coupling speed for cars with non-breakable cargo is 6 km/h.

39.

40. Passing through the retarders, the car is “slowed down”, after which, rolling to the remaining cars, it couples with them and gradually new trains are assembled on the departure tracks. Then the assembled train is transferred to the departure park and the train continues its journey.

41. In addition to the sorting hump, the station also has a railway station. depot serving both transit diesel locomotives and diesel locomotives operating in the Dallas and Fort Worth areas.

42. At the depot, diesel locomotives undergo both minor routine repairs and medium overhauls.

43. This depot does not carry out complete overhaul of diesel locomotives. Diesel locomotives go to Houston for major repairs.

44.

45. By the way, there is a passenger platform not far from the station, but more on that another time.