Railway "Yard" meanings and hierarchy.

[C126]

Trying to explain the decline in wagon-load train profitability to a colleague, afterwards it set me wondering if there was a name for the 'intermediate' marshalling yards a 'level below' the big, regional, hump marshalling yards.  I am thinking particularly of Southampton's Northam (Down) yard that broke up, assembled, and despatched 'trip workings' to little goods yards, depots, and sidings nearby.

 

Did these smaller yards, where marshalling and shunting still took place but were not 'Speedlink' hubs with a train from everywhere else nationally each day, have a particular name or designation (I have heard "Area Freight Centre" used) to place them in the order of precedence?  Or did the railway worker just know how the network's yards operated in relation to goods trains?

 

Sorry for such a strange question, but I found it difficult enough to try and explain what a "goods yard" is compared to one where "marshalling" takes place.  All help gratefully received, and many thanks for giving this your consideration.

[bécasse]

Naming of yards where freight trains were remarshalled generally depended on the name that they were given when they were first constructed and thus, in the majority of cases, reflected the naming policy of the relevant pre-grouping company.

As an example, the substantial yard between Hither Green and Grove Park stations in south-east London was officially Hither Green Sorting Sidings, the name it was given by the South Eastern Railway when first built.

[The Stationmaster]

Marshalling yard,  sorting sidings, sidings, and yard were all terms which were used although 'yard' was also often used in the vernacular to describe any of them.  In addition there were more specific terms such as 'hump yard' (used officially in some places) and 'gravity sidings'. (I belief also used officially in at least one place).  Another term was 'classification yard' although that seems to have dropped out of use certainly by the later days.

 

In some cases a yard was simply given a name which went with the word yard or sidings and had nothing to d with either function or local geography.  so for example within less than two miles of each the GWR in London had Crimea Yard, aka Crimea Sidings,  which was basically a coal yard but did at one time put together long distance trains for departure while just down the line was 'Aberdare Sidings' which was actually a busy marshalling yard.   and of course there were also passenger yards which varied considerably in size.

Edited June 8, 2022 by The Stationmaster

[The Johnster]

I have always understood 'goods yard' to mean a yard with handling facilities to transfer general merchandise goods from road to rail vehicles and vice versa, usually including a coal merchant's siding and occasionally a cattle dock as well.  A 'goods depot' is a larger version of the same thing, in a large town or city, with a comprehensive ranged of handling facilities but no mineral or mileage provision.  Mineral traffic in such towns or cities is dealt with in 'coal yards'.  'Sorting sidings' do not have goods handling facilities, and are areas of flat, usually single ended, sidings where trains are broken down and marshalled into ongoing trains.  'Storage sidings' are similar in appearance, but are used to hold traffic until facilities are avaialble to deal with it, such as coal traffic held pending loading into ships at docks .  'Marshalling yards' are places serving a similar function to sorting sidings, but have an area of reception and departure roads as well, and a 'hump marshalling yard' or 'hump yard' is a variety of marshalling yard  where wagons are propelled over a hump from the reception roads into the sorting roads into which they run by gravity and are controlled by retarders from a central control tower.  Coaching stock and NPCCS were dealt with in 'carriage sidings', never yards, and IIRC dmus were dealt with in dmu sidings, fuelling points, and depots as well.

 

Then there are yards for specific departmental requirements, PW yards, PAD yards, workshop yards, S & T yards and so on.  These are pretty much what it says on the tin. 

 

The term 'yard' in railway usage is a catchall for an area where shunting or other movements take place exclusively at low speed under the direction of ground staff using handsignals. or in the case of 'loco yards', at engine sheds or servicing points, under the autthority of a yard foreman but without signals, the drivers simply keeping a good lookout and blowing the whistle or horn before moving off.  If it isn't a yard or sidings, then it's a running line, with all of the signalling and train-working implications that are entailed by that definition. 

 

There are distinct boundaries between yards and running lines.  Access from a yard to a running line is usually by a fixed signal, and access to a yard from a running line is usually by a calling on or similar aspect from a fixed signal, the actual boundary being a fixed 'stop'  board, from which one is called forward by handsignal from the ground staff or at which  a telephone to the foreman's office is sited, by which he can instruct you as to the next move.  At a loco depot. normal practice was to secure the loco with the handbrake at the stop board, and leave it for the shed staff to deal with.

 

As for a hierarchy, this only existed at a managerial and administrative level.  From the point of view of shunting trains or handling merchandise, there was little difference except size, and while a local goods yard would be under the managerial control of the stationmaster (who may be in control of several stations and yards and not have an office at that particular location, though he'l visit on his rounds), a big goods depot would have it's own managerial staff, and administrative staff dealing with invoices, demurrage, and so on, all done by a leading railman at the small local yard.

 

Some of this may not be techically correct, and I'm sure Stationmaster will point out any errors in it.  I worked on the railway for nearly a decade, and never saw, read or heard an official delineation of what a yard actually was; it was simply accepted by everybody that you knew what a yard was and that was that...

 

 

[bécasse]

Hither Green Sorting Sidings were split into up and down side yards either side of the four track main line and at the London end of the up side sidings there was a small general goods and coal handling facility with quite an elaborate gated road access. Post WWII I doubt whether it handled much more than domestic coal, there was no goods shed or crane (although there was a coal office), but it lasted until domestic coal traffic ceased in the early 1960s even surviving the building of the adjacent Continental Goods Depot which otherwise subsumed the upside sidings (and my father's old allotment). Which just goes to demonstrate that generalisations are just that - generalisations - but still provide firm guidelines for anyone planning a fictional model railway layout.

 

Incidentally, I totally agree with Mike Romans, the vernacular term for anything significantly more than a couple of loops was always "the yard".

[Rivercider]

Just to confuse the issue in Bristol there were two sets of marshalling yards dating from - edit - 1890 and 1906.

To the east of the city was Bristol East Depot (built 1890 and converted to a hump in 1923), with an upside and downside marshalling yard either side of the Bristol - Bath - Paddington main line. Meanwhile Bristol West Depot (built 1906) was to the west of the city on the main line to Taunton, again with an upside yard and downside yard. Although both were given the name 'Depot' I don't believe either had any depot (goods or loco) when originally built. By the 1970s East Depot Downside had become a civil engineers depot, complete with cranage, while West Depot Upside became the location of the Bristol Freightliner terminal.

Edit - by the late 1970s as all the former marshalling yards in the Bristol area had either completely closed, or were being used for other purposes, it meant that Bristol Kingsland Road Yard took over the function of local freight train marshalling. Kingsland Road had eight double ended and a couple of single  ended 'outside' roads where most of the marshalling took place. The 'inside' single ended roads with adjacent hardstanding was where the goods loading and unloading took place. 

 

I don't think I have heard the term Area Freight Centre used in this context, but I have seen reference to a Traffic Centre to refer to a sorting or marshalling location,

 

cheers    

Edited June 9, 2022 by Rivercider
Correction to dates - thanks Mike.

[phil_sutters]

When looking on Realtime for details of the layover of the recent Belmond Brighton Belle excursion, I was surprised to find the location was 'Newhaven Town Yard'. This was the Days Aggregates sidings - a double loop off the Newhaven - Southease line. In the past Newhaven had extensive yards to the north and south of the station, but now it just has the Days sidings to the north and the sea-dredged aggregates terminal - a loop and two sidings - to the south of Harbour station, using the old Marine station site for access.

This is not a model despite the Lego bricks edging!

 

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by phil_sutters

[Michael Hodgson]

Unlike maritime units of measurement, a railway yard is about the same an an imperial yard - three feet, or the distance from Henry VIII's nose to the tip of his middle finger.

 

But the old railway companies tended not to make much of use of yards, preferring to measure their track in Miles and Chains, though they did complain about how heavy it was in lbs/yd.  However the S&T often used yards on signal box diagrams to explain why Distant Signals got their name. 

 

[C126]

@Michael Hodgson Thank you for your kind contribution, but it is the 'non-mensuration yard' relating to railway ops I was curious about.  I did not know about it being King Hnry viii's nose and finger-tip though.  With best wishes.

[The Stationmaster]

12 hours ago, Rivercider said:

Just to confuse the issue in Bristol there were two sets of marshalling yards dating from the 1930s.

To the east of the city was Bristol East Depot, with an upside and downside marshalling yard either side of the Bristol - Bath - Paddington main line. Meanwhile Bristol West Depot was to the west of the city on the main line to Taunton, again with an upside yard and downside yard. Although both were given the name 'Depot' I don't believe either had any depot (goods or loco) when originally built. By the 1970s East Depot Downside had become a civil engineers depot, complete with cranage, while West Depot Upside became the location of the Bristol Freightliner terminal.

Edit - by the late 1970s as all the former marshalling yards in the Bristol area had either completely closed, or were being used for other purposes, it meant that Bristol Kingsland Road Yard took over the function of local freight train marshalling. Kingsland Road had eight double ended and a couple of single  ended 'outside' roads where most of the marshalling took place. The 'inside' single ended roads with adjacent hardstanding was where the goods loading and unloading took place. 

 

I don't think I have heard the term Area Freight Centre used in this context, but I have seen reference to a Traffic Centre to refer to a sorting or marshalling location,

 

cheers    

Bristol East Depot pre-dated the Great War although I would suspect that the Up Yard hump was added later - possibly between the wars.  On checking further i've found that the Hump GF was commissioned in 1923 so presumably the hump dated from then.  The last time I looked (not too many years back) the fireplace which had been in the GF building was still visible - cut into the natural rock.

 

Traffic Centtre - abbreviated to 'TC' was thing of the 1970s and I think the idea of it was to avoid something being called a marshalling yard or whatever for, hmm, 'political reasons'  (lower case 'p' and it seems in some cases to have been applied to marshalling yards which had been previously officially closed at some time or other).

[Aire Head]

On the former Midland Lines around Yorkshire the yard used for marshalling/sorting are just referred to as sidings linked to the whichever side of the line they happen to be on.

 

E.g. Skipton Up Sidings, Skipton Down Sidings, Stourton Up Sidings and so on.

[C126]

May I thank you all for your time and contributions; it is much appreciated, and the answers were most useful, I hope not just to me.  I feared there would be no simple answer to satisfy my 'Librarian's desire for tidyness'.  I do like the term "sorting sidings", and will use this the next time anyone is daft enough to engage me on the subject.  Many thanks and best wishes again.

[SED Freightman]

On 08/06/2022 at 12:03, C126 said:

Trying to explain the decline in wagon-load train profitability to a colleague, afterwards it set me wondering if there was a name for the 'intermediate' marshalling yards a 'level below' the big, regional, hump marshalling yards.  I am thinking particularly of Southampton's Northam (Down) yard that broke up, assembled, and despatched 'trip workings' to little goods yards, depots, and sidings nearby.

 

Did these smaller yards, where marshalling and shunting still took place but were not 'Speedlink' hubs with a train from everywhere else nationally each day, have a particular name or designation (I have heard "Area Freight Centre" used) to place them in the order of precedence?  Or did the railway worker just know how the network's yards operated in relation to goods trains?

 

Sorry for such a strange question, but I found it difficult enough to try and explain what a "goods yard" is compared to one where "marshalling" takes place.  All help gratefully received, and many thanks for giving this your consideration.

Yards, sidings and depots served by the Speedlink Network were allocated to one of three classifications based on the activities undertaken in 1984, these classifications, which were probably originally for financial purposes, became apparent to ground staff when certain locations were renamed in the SR Freight WTT commencing 14/05/1984.  The classifications, in very simple terms, were NY = Network Yard (main yard handling Speedlink Trunk Services), SS = Section Siding (smaller yard or sidings where Speedlink trip workings were handled) and TC = Terminal Complex (a location where several customers were served by shunt movements).  Taking the Southampton area as an example, Eastleigh East Yard became Eastleigh East N.Y. and Southampton (Northam) Down Yard became Southampton Down T.C.  The term Area Freight Centre (at least by the 1980's on the SR) generally refered to the location where the local TOPS office was located.

[C126]

13 hours ago, SED Freightman said:

Yards, sidings and depots served by the Speedlink Network were allocated to one of three classifications based on the activities undertaken in 1984, these classifications, which were probably originally for financial purposes, became apparent to ground staff when certain locations were renamed in the SR Freight WTT commencing 14/05/1984.  The classifications, in very simple terms, were NY = Network Yard (main yard handling Speedlink Trunk Services), SS = Section Siding (smaller yard or sidings where Speedlink trip workings were handled) and TC = Terminal Complex (a location where several customers were served by shunt movements).  Taking the Southampton area as an example, Eastleigh East Yard became Eastleigh East N.Y. and Southampton (Northam) Down Yard became Southampton Down T.C.  The term Area Freight Centre (at least by the 1980's on the SR) generally refered to the location where the local TOPS office was located.

 

Many thanks, @SED Freightman , for this contribution, and especially for its 'S.R. bias' (of interest to me) and confirming Southampton Down Yard's status.  Glad to learn just what an "Area Freight Centre" was as well.  Please all do keep contributing if anyone can add new info./ additional clarification.  Thanks again.

[SED Freightman]

Just to complete the Southampton area picture, the local AFC / TOPS Office was located on the down platform at Eastleigh.

[Oldddudders]

'Yard' might also be used to describe areas unconnected entirely with freight operations. It might refer to the complex area of trackwork immediately outside a major station, particularly a terminus.

 

When I worked at Victoria in 1967/8, the shift supervisors in the Central signalbox, Bill and Joe, were classified as 'Yard Inspectors". I am sure they never saw revenue freight, but would have engineers' trains under possession from time to time. The two chaps were colloquially known as Traffic Regulators, and that may have become their official title in the new grading structure about that time.

 

When I entered the Control at Redhill later in 1968, I was left in no doubt by the sages that Traffic Regulators were the salt of the earth. This left me a little nonplussed when, a few years later, I found myself covering just such a post in the new London Bridge box on a supernumerary basis.......