Northtown Yard

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Northtown Yard

South part with the direction harp (left), in the background the skyline of Minneapolis (view to the south)
Data
Operating point type Marshalling yard
Design Through station
opening 1918
location
Place / district Minneapolis
State Minnesota
Country United States
Coordinates 45 ° 1 ′ 31 ″  N , 93 ° 15 ′ 52 ″  W Coordinates: 45 ° 1 ′ 31 ″  N , 93 ° 15 ′ 52 ″  W
List of train stations in the United States
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The Northtown Yard is a marshalling yard of the BNSF Railway in north Minneapolis , which extends on the east bank of the Mississippi over three miles from the borough of Northeast Minneapolis to Fridley in the north. It goes back to a freight and marshalling yard of the Northern Pacific Railway from the 1910s, which was expanded to one of the largest marshalling yards in the USA after the merger to form the Burlington Northern Railroad in the 1970s. Of the former 64  directional tracks, only 48 are left and in 2018 an average of 14 trains were rearranged here a day, but a total of up to 50 trains pass the marshalling yard every day.

history

Route network of the Northern Pacific Railway around 1900, Minneapolis / St. Paul bottom right

At the beginning of the 20th century, the twin cities of Minneapolis-Saint Paul formed the southeastern end of the Northern Pacific Railway's route network. With the increase in freight traffic, the region developed into an important junction between the railway networks to the east and west coasts and south to the Gulf of Mexico . The Northern Pacific therefore planned after the turn of the century to build a freight and marshalling yard above Minneapolis, which was built on the east bank of the Mississippi in Northtown by the end of the 1910s.

In 1970, the Northern Pacific merged with several other railway companies to form the Burlington Northern Railroad (BN), which combined the many small freight and marshalling yards of the individual predecessor companies in the twin cities into one marshalling yard. Between 1971 and 1976, the largest marshalling yard in the BN network was built on the grounds of Northtown Yard for 43 million  US dollars. In addition to a flat station with 64  direction tracks , it was also equipped with large maintenance halls for diesel locomotives and freight cars . With the merger of the BN and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF) to form the BNSF Railway in 1995, Northtown Yard had to cede its position in the newly created network to the Argentine Yard of AT&SF in Kansas City.

While up to 100 trains a day passed the marshalling yard at the end of the 1990s, the number halved by 2018, with an average of 14 trains with up to 100 freight wagons being reassembled here, the rest being block trains for bulk goods for which there is no need in on-the-go treatments.

description

A shunting locomotive with a traction truck pulling the trigger over the discharge mountain in 2017
BNSF Northtown Yard Minneapolis.png
Aerial Minneapolis Skyline and BNSF MNNR Rail Yard (rotated) .jpg


Location and extent of Northtown Yard in the north of Minneapolis, on the right drain mountain and direction harp of the marshalling yard 2010 (view to the south)

From north to south, the marshalling yard was originally divided into a drive-in group with 12 tracks, the drainage mountain with the adjoining directional harp consisting of eight groups with eight tracks each and a subordinate group with 27 tracks; the exit group with nine tracks is located west of the direction harp. With the decline in the number of freight wagons treated at the beginning of the 21st century from 2000 daily to only 600, two groups of the directional harp were shut down and partially dismantled, the number of directional tracks was reduced from 64 to 48.

At the ends of the directional harp on the east side there are maintenance halls for diesel locomotives and freight cars with four to five continuous tracks. The Northstar Line of regional traffic between Minneapolis and Big Lake runs on the west side of the marshalling yard, and in the south the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) crosses the marshalling yard, which leads to the neighboring Shoreham Yard of the CPR.

See also

Web links

Commons : Northtown Yard  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Soo Line and Northern Pacific plan big yards in northeast Minneapolis. In: The Minneapolis Journal. July 7, 1906, p. 1 (from newspapers.com, accessed June 10, 2019).
  2. ^ Work Started on New Belt Line Around St. Paul. In: Railway Age Gazette. Vol. 63, No. 3, 1917, pp. 97 f.
  3. ^ Freight Belt Line and Terminals for St. Paul. In: Engineering News-Record. Vol. 79, No. 17, p. 784.
  4. ^ William D. Middleton, George Smerk, Roberta L. Diehl: Encyclopedia of North American Railroads. Indiana University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-253-34916-3 , pp. 185.
  5. ^ A b Michael Rhodes: North American Railyards. Voyageur Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-76034-609-9 , pp. 19-21.
  6. ↑ Mark Maves, Kristin Petersen: This is how a team replaced a Historic Bridge with a 305-Foot, 1.6 Million Pound Innovative Truss Span Bridge. Short Elliott Hendrickson Inc., May 17, 2018, accessed June 10, 2019.
  7. ↑ Shoreham Repository. Canadian Pacific Railway. Retrieved June 10, 2019.
  8. ↑ Twin Cities Area Freight Railroad Map. Minnesota Department of Transportation, September 2015, accessed June 10, 2019.