Conway Yard
| Conway Yard | |
|---|---|
|
Aerial view facing northeast (January 2009) |
|
| Data | |
| Operating point type | Marshalling yard |
| Design | Through station |
| opening | Early 20th century |
| location | |
| Place / district | Conway |
| State | Pennsylvania |
| Country | United States |
| Coordinates | 40 ° 40 ′ 12 " N , 80 ° 14 ′ 53" W |
| List of train stations in the United States | |
.png)
.jpg)
The Conway Yard is a marshalling yard on the Norfolk Southern Railway in Beaver County , Pennsylvania . It is located about 35 kilometers northwest of Pittsburgh and extends for five kilometers on the north bank of the Ohio between the Boroughs Freedom in the north and Conway in the south. It goes back to a marshalling yard on the Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroad from the 1880s, which became part of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) network at the end of the 19th century . In the 1950s, the PRR expanded it into the world's largest marshalling yard with a total of 107 direction tracks, a position he held until 1980. In 1976 the marshalling yard came together with the then operator Penn Central and other insolvent railway companies in the possession of the state rescue company Conrail . After the split of Conrail in 1999, it was finally taken over by the Norfolk Southern Railway with a large part of the former PRR routes .
history
.png)
.jpg)
The railroad came in the early 1850s with the Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroad to the north-west of Pittsburgh location Beaver County . The route between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Crestline , Ohio , was built in the south of the county along the Ohio and ran past the Conway family's land. The line later became part of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway , which was part of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) network . With the increase in freight traffic to the west, the PRR was looking for a place for a new marshalling yard above Pittsburgh and found a sufficiently wide flat spot in the river valley on the north bank of the Ohio in the land of the Conways and purchased the first 25 hectares from the family in 1883/1884 . Further purchases followed by the beginning of the 20th century and the Conway Yard, named after the family, was continuously expanded . At the beginning of the 1910s, the marshalling yard with its extensive depot already comprised over 200 kilometers of track with a capacity of almost 9,000 freight cars . Over 1,400 employees waited here for a large number of steam locomotives and freight cars, of which around 2,300 were shunted every day.
After further expansions of the operations were made in the 1940s, the PRR invested 35 million US dollars in the 1950s in the redesign and modernization of the Conway Yard , which was strategically located in the center of the PRR network, which stretched from the east coast to stretched to Chicago and St. Louis in the west and ran 1,600 freight trains every day . Between 1953 and 1958 the world's largest marshalling yard was built here, consisting of two separate, automated flat stations with a drainage hill for traffic in east and west directions. Both marshalling yards had an entry and exit group of 9-10 tracks each and a directional harp of 54 (east) and 53 (west) tracks. The capacity was around 12,000 freight wagons and the daily throughput could be increased to 9,000.
The Pennsylvania Railroad merged in 1968 with the New York Central Railroad to form Penn Central , which was insolvent in 1970 and in 1976 merged with several other railroad companies in the eastern United States in the Conrail rescue company . With the expansion of the Bailey Yard of the Union Pacific Railroad and the Maschen marshalling yard of the Deutsche Bundesbahn until 1980, the Conway Yard lost its rank as the world's largest marshalling yard, but was still the largest in the Conrail network. After a takeover battle in 1999, the CSX Transportation and the Norfolk Southern Railway acquired 42% and 58% of Conrail, respectively, with a large part of the routes of the PRR and the Conway Yard since then in the network of the Norfolk Southern.
Today's plant
At the beginning of the 2000s, the marshalling yard took up an area of 230 hectares and, in its configuration, which has been virtually unchanged since the 1950s, had around 290 kilometers of track. The flat station for traffic in the east direction (on the south side) was later shut down and a large part of the tracks of the direction harp including the track brakes were dismantled. The entire volume of traffic is now handled via the second flat train station in the west, which runs from south to north. Today it consists of an entry group with eleven tracks, a directional harp with 53 tracks and an exit group with ten tracks. 3,000–3,300 freight wagons are shunted here every day, which is only about half of the maximum shunting capacity of 6,000 wagons.
As of 2010, Norfolk Southern invested 40 million US dollars in the construction of a modern maintenance hangar for diesel-electric locomotives with three continuous tracks, which replaced the roundhouse built in 1909 by the PRR. It is located on the east side next to the discharge hill of the remaining marshalling yard; the former turntable has been preserved alongside the building completed in 2014. Roughly 15 to 20% of all repairs and 10% of regular maintenance on Norfolk Southern's 4,000+ locomotives are performed here today.
See also
Web links
- NS Conway Yard Map 2000. Multimodalways
- NS Conway Yard Map 2005. Dave Wisniewski
Individual evidence
- ^ John O. Buerkle, Jr .: A History of Conway Borough, the Conway Family, Crow's Run Valley, and Conway Yards. Conway Borough, Pennsylvania. Retrieved April 28, 2019.
- ^ Jeff Snedden: Histories & Mysteries: The Legacy of Quay, Conway Yard and 'The Mound'. The Times, May 29, 2018. Retrieved April 28, 2019.
- ^ WC Cushing: Progress in Yard Design. In: Railroad Gazette , Vol. 38, No. 19, 1905, pp. 479–497, here p. 486.
- ^ Conway Yard: World's Largest Push-Button Yard Speeds Freight Train Schedules. Pennsylvania Railroad 1957, on Multimodalways.org. Retrieved April 28, 2019.
- ^ Board of Directors Inspection Trip. Pennsylvania Railroad 1957, on Multimodalways.org. Retrieved April 28, 2019.
- ^ A b Michael Rhodes: North American Railyards. Voyageur Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-7603-4609-9 , pp. 204-206.
- ^ William D. Middleton, George Smerk, Roberta L. Diehl: Encyclopedia of North American Railroads. Indiana University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-253-34916-3 , pp. 333.
- ^ Conway, PA: NS / Conrail / Penn Railyard. Towns and Nature, 2018. Retrieved April 28, 2019.
- ^ NS System Facts. Norfolk Southern Corp., 2017. Retrieved April 28, 2019.
- ↑ Doing it all at Conway: No More roundhouse, but tradition of excellence continues in modern shop. BizNS, Norfolk Southern Corp., Fall 2013. Retrieved April 30, 2019.