How is a railway marshalling yard in the USA arranged? The largest train stations in the world The largest and most beautiful train stations in the world
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. 
Techniques for optimizing and increasing the efficiency of Moscow freight stations.
The Moscow Railway is one of the most actively developing transport structures, in which freight traffic plays an important role. On the territory of the city (within the Moscow Ring Road) there are 44 freight stations with a total area of 1,692 hectares.
Due to the large area of the occupied territories, proposals often appear to move freight yards and stations outside the city, but the existing freight flow, the needs of the city and the freight turnover of the Moscow railway hub do not allow these measures to be followed.
It is much more rational to follow the path of optimizing work at these stations, increasing the intensity of use of existing territories and freeing up part of the territories for the needs of the city. To consider possible methods for reorganizing these stations, it is necessary to assess the current state of the railway freight infrastructure.
According to the nature of the work carried out, freight stations can be divided into general purpose, sorting and intermediate stations, according to their location in the city into – central, middle and peripheral.
At general stations Loading, unloading and sorting of cargo is carried out. For these operations, a large cargo yard is located at the stations. The number of general purpose stations in Moscow is 12. Of these, two freight yards - Moscow - Rizhskaya and Moscow-Tovarnaya Yaroslavskaya - are closed.
The area of general purpose stations in Moscow is 567.8 hectares. Most of these stations are concentrated in the central and middle part of the city.
Marshalling yards carry out work on sorting cars and forming trains. Due to the length of freight trains and the peculiarities of the technological process, these stations are the largest on the railways. And due to the peculiarities of the technological process for sorting cars, their work is associated with high noise and environmental pollution.
Despite the small number, there are only 6 of them in Moscow; marshalling stations occupy 549.6 hectares. Moreover, most of them are located in the middle part of the city.
Intermediate stations perform work on the access roads to the city for loading and unloading cargo. They may include small cargo yards. These stations represent an inconspicuous framework for the freight flow of the railways, as they transport goods to individual areas of the city. There are 26 of them and they occupy the remaining 574.6 hectares. Of these, 12 stations located on the Small Ring Railway (MKR) are closed for freight work.
In the future, it is planned to partially transfer transit traffic from the Moscow Circle and redistribute it to the Big Ring of the Moscow Railway. In order to maintain traffic along the Moscow Ring Road, the reconstruction plan includes the construction of a third main track on the 37-kilometer section Presnya-Lefortovo-Andronovka-500-meter insert-15th connecting branch-Ugreshskaya-Lublino.
To determine the efficiency of the current use of freight station territories, the concept of station capacity should be introduced as the ratio of freight turnover per year per 1 hectare. As can be seen from the presented graph, a comparison of the operation of freight stations with each other demonstrates low power indicators.
Accordingly, increasing the density of use of the territory by increasing the vertical layout will reduce the occupied area and optimize work at these stations. It is noteworthy that the highest power was detected at the Moscow-Tovarnaya Paveletskaya station. The station management managed to achieve this by partially automating the loading and unloading process.
Techniques for optimizing freight stations based on the study of world and domestic experience can be systematized by the volume of work performed, the number of transport involved, the area of container and unit storage, as well as the range of services provided. Based on this, it is possible to introduce a classification in accordance with each type: policy, complex and cluster.
Policy– the most extensive method for optimizing the operation of freight stations in terms of the amount of infrastructure involved. This type includes large hub stations and freight villages located outside the city. A distinctive feature of this type is the large area of occupied territories, multimodality, and the use of three or more modes of transport.
In structure, a cargo village is an analogue of a seaport, where cargo arriving by one type of transport is immediately unloaded, undergoes customs clearance if necessary, processed, stored, distributed and sent to its destination by another mode of transport on the territory of the cargo village. Also on the territory there are offices, hotels, and residential settlements are being built nearby. This concept of intercepting freight policies near major cities has been developing since the 1970s.
In Germany there is an association of freight villages DGG. A large number of similar complexes are located in the USA and Europe. Near Berlin, with a population of 5 million people, there are 3 freight villages. In total, there are 35 cargo policies in Germany. In Italy there are 25, one of the largest is InterportoBologna, located in the center of the country and occupies 320 hectares.
In Russia, since 2011, the project of a cargo village in Vorsino, located in the south of Moscow, near the intersection of the M3 (Kievskoe Highway), A 101 (Kaluzhskoe and Varshavskoe Highways) and A 108 (Moscow Big Ring) highways, has been actively developing. At the moment, the complex occupies an area of 120 hectares, which is planned to be developed to 600 hectares. A multimodal road and railway terminal was built on the territory.
Complex– medium-sized type of optimization. It includes transport and logistics and terminal logistics centers (TLC), container and piggyback terminals. The main task of this type is cargo processing and storage, customs clearance and information services. TLCs include free space for forwarding and transport companies, parking lots, and service stations.
As a rule, TLCs are located at the entrances to the city, as well as in its peripheral part near large hubs, marshalling stations and freight yards. Separately, it is worth mentioning complexes of the “dry port” type, in which process automation is used using port cranes on land, which makes it possible to increase the speed of cargo processing several times compared to the use of special equipment.
Cluster– the most compact type of optimization. A distinctive feature of this type is flexible modularity, the ability to expand the structure with an increase in the volume of cargo handling, as well as the ability to remove containers without moving them from place to place, which increases the speed of loading and unloading operations several times. The main part of this type is a multi-level container terminal, designed as a cluster with a large number of identical cells.
The idea of creating such structures came from Japan. Since the main containers used for cargo work are 20 and 40 TEU, a cellular structure has been proposed, having a module for storing one 40 TEU container or two 20 TEU containers*. Loading of containers into cells is carried out by a special crane for unloading containers.
The structural basis is a metal frame. An example of such a cluster is a multi-level container terminal in Japan, built by JFE Engineering Corporation. The dimensions of the container terminal are 150x56 meters. Construction area – 8,400 sq. m, respectively. Height 31 meters (10-storey building). Cargo turnover – 49 containers per hour. Accordingly, 1,176 containers are processed per day on an area of less than one hectare.
For comparison, the Moscow-Tovarnaya Paveletskaya station (one of the most efficient freight stations in Moscow) handles an average of 5,000 containers per day on an area of 52 hectares. Accordingly, the power of one of the most efficient stations in Moscow is 15 times lower than the proposed type.
Due to the fact that only 7 freight stations are located in the peripheral part of the city, the analysis allows us to conclude that the most relevant type for optimizing the volumetric-spatial organization of the territories of freight stations is a cluster.
In accordance with the types of existing stations identified at the beginning of the article, it can be assumed that complex or cluster optimization types are applicable for general purpose stations and intermediate stations, depending on the central, median or peripheral location of the station.
The natural reduction of freight stations due to the increase in passenger traffic on the Moscow Ring Railway, as well as the need to move transit cargo outside the city, leads to the creation of a ring of freight policies around Moscow, which will be located near railways and highways, as well as river and air transport.
Regarding marshalling stations, the analysis shows the need to move this type of station outside the city. The main reason for the impossibility of finding this type of station in the city is the large area of occupied territories, technological features of sorting cars, making it impossible to transfer them underground or reduce the occupied territories through vertical planning.
The vacated territories of marshalling stations must be repurposed into cluster or complex types, and the remaining territories must be provided for urban needs. A preliminary calculation of the area that the city can obtain using these methods shows that two-thirds of the territories occupied by freight stations (about 1000 hectares) can be freed up painlessly for freight turnover and the needs of the city. At the same time, the return on investment in these methods of optimizing freight stations ranges from 5 to 10 years, depending on the volume of related work on the reorganization of territories.
Of course, the use of these methods is associated with a high level of costs. However, the socio-economic effect that the city can receive for its needs from the vacated territories, as well as the quick payback due to high freight turnover, demonstrate the viability and high prospects of the developed methods for the development of freight traffic, as well as the city and increasing its investment attractiveness.
* 20 TEU is a symbol for a 20-foot cargo container (dimensions 20x8x8.5 feet or 6.1x2.44.2.59 m, volume 39 cubic meters).
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. 
On UK Railways in the 1960s Extensive work was carried out on the reconstruction and construction of nine large marshalling stations, including two new two-way stations. Since then, due to the development of road and container transportation, several stations have been closed, the remaining ones have been reduced, and all sorting humps have been closed.
At the new one-way stations, 12-14 tracks were laid in the reception parks (at that time), 8-12 in the departure parks, and 40-50 tracks in the sorting parks. The capacity of the tracks was 60-80 cars. The processing capacity of one-way stations ranged from 3,000 to 4,500 cars per day.
The Carlisle two-way station (see Fig. 21.3), which replaced 9 low-power marshalling yards, had 10 tracks in the receiving and departure yards and 37 tracks in the marshalling yard in the odd system. In the even system, the receiving fleet included 8 tracks, the sorting fleet - 48, and the departure fleet - 10 tracks. Another two-way station, Tis, which replaced 6 existing stations, had 12 tracks in the receiving parks, 40 tracks in the marshalling parks, and 12 and 8 tracks in the departure parks. The first high-speed slope at these stations had a steepness of 62.5 %O.
The Tinsley one-way automated marshalling station was built using a combined scheme. To select local cars traveling mainly to the industrial area, a local marshalling yard of 25 tracks with a hump was placed in series with the outer tracks of the main marshalling fleet of 53 tracks. At this station, a new system for regulating the speed of movement of sorted cars was used for the first time, based on the use of hydraulic accelerators-retarders of the Doughty system, which made it possible to automate the sorting process and, in addition, reduce the design height of the hump from 6.3 to 3.3 m.
Many hump humps at new and reconstructed stations were equipped with automatic braking systems that ensure the speed of exit from the second braking position depending on the weight and running properties of the cuts, as well as on the degree of filling of the hump tracks.
Railways of France are also implementing the concept of concentrating sorting work in a smaller number of well-equipped new and renovated stations. At the same time, the desire to reduce the number of marshalling stations was intended not only to reduce operating costs, but also to reduce capital costs for the contact network and lengthening of tracks to 800-900 m during the electrification of railways.
By the beginning of the 1980s. Many marshalling stations were built and reconstructed, including 12 large ones (Vouappi, Gervay, Siblen, Hourcade, etc.). During the reconstruction, Bourget station was
Rice. 21.3. The Carlisle (UK) marshalling yard layout has been converted from two-way to one-way. At large one-way stations, the number of tracks in reception parks was 13-14, in sorting parks - from 32 to 48, in departure parks - from 8 to 20. The useful length of tracks in reception and departure parks is 700-800 m, and in sorting parks - 800-900 m.
Many large marshalling stations in France have overpasses for train reception and departure routes and intra-station crossings. One of these stations is the one-way marshalling station Gervay (see Fig. 21.4), built according to the classical scheme with a sequential arrangement of parks and having 14 tracks in the reception and departure parks and 59 tracks in the marshalling park. To receive trains from Lyon in disbandment, two overpasses were built: at the intersection of the main tracks of the Dijon-Lyon line and to receive trains at the entrance neck of the reception park along a loop track.
A characteristic feature of the organization of sorting work on the railways of France is the presence of separate sorting devices for accelerated freight trains, which deliver food cargo to Paris and other large cities of the country at night. In some cases, separate stations are intended for this (Lille-Saint-Sauveur, Bordeaux-Saint-Jean, etc.); in other cases, at stations one sorting system is used for regular trains, and the other for accelerated trains (Sottville, Trappe stations, etc. .).
At French marshalling yards railways, as in other countries, in addition to the main mechanized humps, low-power humps are installed in the tail necks of marshalling yards or in additional parks with short tracks to facilitate the selection of formed trains into groups.
For most marshalling yards German railways characterized by a large capacity of reception, sorting and dispatching and grouping parks. Since the early 1950s of the last century, several marshalling stations have been reconstructed (Braunschweig, Bebra, Gremberg, Mannheim, etc.), and some double-sided stations (Brunschweig, Saute) were converted into single-sided ones during the reconstruction process. At Mannheim dual station, the east-west sorting system has been reconstructed, increasing the number of sorting tracks to 42 over
Rice. 21.4. Scheme of the Gervay marshalling station (France) based on the auxiliary sorting system available at the station. In the Hamburg hub, in 1979, to replace five previously existing low-power stations, a new two-way marshalling station, Maschen, was built - the most powerful marshalling station in Europe (see Fig. 21.5). The number of sub-mountains on the main humps of this station is 48 in each system. Some of the sub-hill tracks are sorting and dispatch tracks, and some are sorting tracks, in series with which there is an auxiliary hump and a grouping depot for more detailed sorting of cars. The length of the station tracks at the Mashen station is 300 km. About 1,000 switches were laid on it, 2,100 signals were installed, 325 beam retarders, 112 devices for settling cars, 2 hump centralization posts, 2 stations for preparing trains, a car and locomotive depot, as well as 47 overpasses, 54 buildings and 11 km of intra-station roads were built. highways. The sorting humps at the station are automated using a system developed by Siemens to regulate the speed of rolling cars and moving them along the tracks of the sorting yard using special rope unloaders.
On the railways of Europe there are marshalling stations in which a system of sequential receiving - sorting - departure parks is located completely or partially on a slope that ensures the movement of cars in the sorting direction under the influence of gravity without the participation of shunting locomotives (Nuremberg and Duisburg-Hochveld in Germany, Muttenz II in Switzerland, Vrsovice in the Czech Republic, etc.)
In the receiving park, to hold the trains in place until the dissolution begins, there are holding retarders in the exit part of the tracks, and a regulating car retarder in front of the section with a high-speed slope. Further along the path of the cuts there are brake positions for holding groups of cars if necessary or for regulating the speed of their rolling.
An example of the profile and layout of a marshalling station on a continuous slope, adopted in Germany, is shown in Fig. 21.6. The plan and profile of the sorting system is conventionally divided into 7 zones, indicated by numbers (see Fig. 21.6). The profile of the reception park (zone 1) has a convex parabolic shape with slopes from 5 to 14 %O
Rice. 21.5.
Rice. 21.6.
/ - reception park; 2 - drain part; 3 - collecting zone; 4 - sorting park; 5 - exit to the grouping park; 6 - group parks; 7- departure parks; 8 - retarders
(average slope 7 %O). When the holding retarder is released, the cars standing on a large slope begin to move, dragging with them the rest of the train located on smaller slopes. A retarder is located in front of the high-speed slope, which regulates the arrival of cars at the descent section. The drainage part (zone 2) has a concave profile with decreasing slopes from 50 to 2.5 %O, similar to the profile of the descent part of the slides. Behind the switch zone of the head of the sorting yard there is a collecting zone 3 with a length of approximately 150 m and a slope of 10 %O, where cars are combined into groups in front of collecting retarders, which regulate the speed of cars approaching each other and their stopping. Next, the groups are allowed into the sorting park (zone 4) and stop before leaving until the train accumulates. From the top of the marshalling yard tracks, you can direct the train to the departure yard or, by supplying a train locomotive, send the train to the main track. The lower part of the sorting park, consisting of two sections, has access to the departure park 7 through grouping parks 6 for the formation of multi-group trains. The tail of this part of the marshalling yard has a slope of 25 %O and forms the descent part of low-power slides. The slope of the grouping park tracks is 7 %O, necks between them and the departure park - 17 %O, entrance neck of this park 7 %O, paths - 5 %O.
New stations on a continuous slope have not been built in their entirety recently. There is only one case where a second sorting system, called Muttenz II station, was installed on the slope of the reception park during the construction of a second sorting system at the Muttenz station in Switzerland. This was caused by the peculiarities of the terrain - a significant difference in ground elevations in the areas of the entrance part of the reception park and the sorting park. The longitudinal profile of the reception park also has a parabolic shape with an average slope of 7.2 %O. On the supply part of the hump, three braking positions are provided: holding on the tracks of the receiving park, auxiliary immediately after the exit neck of the park, and pre-hill on a 14% slope in front of the hump. Electromagnetic retarders were used for the first time on the descent part of the slide and at the beginning of the sub-hill tracks, and the sorting tracks for 300 m were equipped with accelerator-precipitators to move bad runners into the middle of the park.
It should be noted that marshalling stations on a continuous slope were built on those roads where trains of small weight and length operate. Some of them, for example, on the French railways, were later rebuilt into hummocks. These stations provide savings on shunting locomotives, but have significant disadvantages: the level of safety of train traffic and shunting work is lower; high costs for equipping tracks with retarders and their operation; the difficulty of sending cars from the station in the direction opposite to sorting, due to the large difference in marks between the beginning and end of the sorting system (about 25 m); slow sorting of cars, the impossibility of using variable dismantling speed and, as a result, lower processing capacity compared to high-capacity hump stations.
Nevertheless, under favorable terrain conditions, one should not exclude the possibility of developing options for placing foothill parks on a slope at regional marshalling stations, as well as those serving a port or industrial area, which will allow sorting of cars with less cost of shunting equipment or without the participation of locomotives at all.
