Enola Yard

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Enola Yard
Aerial view of Harrisburg (center), the Enola Yard
on the opposite bank of the Susquehanna at the top left
Data
Operating point type Marshalling yard
Design Through station
opening 1905
location
Place / district Harrisburg
State Pennsylvania
Country United States
Coordinates 40 ° 17 ′ 41 ″  N , 76 ° 55 ′ 31 ″  W Coordinates: 40 ° 17 ′ 41 ″  N , 76 ° 55 ′ 31 ″  W
List of train stations in the United States
i16 i16 i18

The Enola Yard is a marshalling yard on the Norfolk Southern Railway in East Pennsboro Township , Pennsylvania . It stretches for three miles on the west bank of the Susquehanna River , across from the east bank town of Harrisburg . It is named after the small town of Enola , which emerged from a stop on the Northern Central Railway (NCRY). The NCRY was a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR), which built a large marshalling yard consisting of two flat stations here by 1905 . The later partially electrified Enola Yard was until the 1950s the most important railway junction of the PRR in freight traffic. However, since it could no longer be expanded, the PRR expanded the Conway Yard , located northwest of Pittsburgh , into what was then the world's largest marshalling yard and relocated a large part of the traffic there. In 1976 the Enola Yard came together with the then operator Penn Central and other bankrupt railway companies in the possession of the state rescue company Conrail , which closed the flat stations. After Conrail split up in 1999, it was finally taken over with a large part of the former PRR lines by the Norfolk Southern Railway , which has again operated a smaller marshalling yard with a waste mountain here since the early 2000s .

history

The Pennsylvania Railroad network from 1916, Harrisburg junction in the center on the right RouteIndustrial culture anchor point Symbol.svg. Since the Enola Yard could not be expanded, the PRR expanded the Conway Yard RouteIndustrial culture anchor point Symbol.svg northwest of Pittsburgh and relocated the traffic in the 1950s .

Pennsylvania Railroad in Harrisburg

At the end of the 19th century, the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) was the largest railroad company in the USA and operated a marshalling yard with a large depot in Harrisburg . With the increase in freight traffic at this railway junction, where the important north-south and east-west connections of the PRR crossed, the marshalling yard in the center of the city reached its capacity limit. On the opposite bank of the Susquehanna River , which forms the western city limits of Harrisburg, ran the route of the Northern Central Railway (NCRY), which had been one of several hundred subsidiaries of the PRR since the 1860s. At the beginning of the 20th century, the PRR decided to build a new marshalling yard to relieve freight traffic in Harrisburg on the NCRY route on the west bank of the Susquehanna. The NCRY owned the Enola stop in what is now East Pennsboro Township between Fairview and Marysville , which was named in 1888 after the daughter of the farmer from whom the land for the station area was purchased at the time. He later gave its name to the Enola Yard and the community that developed here. The marshalling yard, which was completed in early 1905, still extends over five kilometers from Fairview in the south to Marysville in the north, where the PRR built the new four-track Rockville Bridge over the Susquehanna by 1902 . In addition, the PRR controlled the Cumberland Valley Railroad Bridge over the river to Harrisburg through the subsidiary Cumberland Valley Railroad , the freight traffic to the east along the Enola Low Grade Freight Line crossed the Susquehanna but 20 kilometers south over the Shocks Mills Bridge in Lancaster County, completed in 1905 .

Enola Yard from 1905

View of the south side of Enola Yard 1960, the depot on the left

In 1905, the railway systems had around 180 kilometers of track and were divided into two separate flat stations with a drainage hill for traffic in the east and west. Both had only one entry group (21 or 20 tracks) and one directional harp (17 or 25 tracks), which accommodate around 100 freight wagons per directional track, which meant that an additional exit group could be dispensed with. Between the flat station for traffic in the east direction (eastbound) on the west side and the one for traffic in the west direction (westbound) on the east side, there was a large depot with a roundhouse and the following maintenance halls for the steam locomotives as well as a repair shop for freight cars. From the end of the 1930s, the marshalling yard was expanded and automated. The number of direction tracks was increased to 33 (eastbound) and 35 tracks (westbound) . The capacity could be increased from an average of 7,000 freight wagons per day in 1906 to 11,200 freight wagons in 1939 and 14,100 in 1941; During the Second World War , the record number of 22,600 processed freight cars was reached on June 19, 1943. In the course of the electrification of many PRR lines on the east coast and the line between Philadelphia and Harrisburg at the end of the 1930s, the exit from the flat station for traffic in the east direction and the entire entry group of the flat station in the opposite direction were electrified in the southern part; electrical operation in freight traffic existed here until 1983. At the end of the 1940s, the track groups were further extended to handle trains of over 140 freight wagons. In addition, the track harp for eastern traffic was expanded to 44 direction tracks. At that time the Enola Yard was the largest marshalling yard in the world and employed around 2,000 people, but could not be expanded. The PRR therefore decided to expand the Conway Yard northwest of Pittsburgh , which became the world's largest marshalling yard from 1958 with two flat stations and directional harps with over 50 tracks and to which the PRR shifted a large part of the freight traffic from Enola Yard .

Conrail 1976

Access to the south side in 2015, the masts of the former overhead lines are still in place ( electrification by 1983)

With the expansion of the road network in the USA and the emergence of motorized individual transport, the railroad transported fewer and fewer goods and people, which from the 1960s onwards made the large railroad networks in North America increasingly unprofitable and subsequently led to several bankruptcies and mergers of the railway companies. In 1968 the PRR merged with the New York Central Railroad to form Penn Central , which was insolvent two years later and in 1976 passed into the possession of the state rescue company Conrail along with other railway companies , including the railway division of the Reading Company (formerly Philadelphia and Reading Railway ) . In the course of consolidation in freight traffic, Conrail downgraded the routes west of the Susquehanna in favor of the Reading Company connections east of Harrisburg; the Enola Yard was largely bypassed. The flat stations with their humps were shut down in Enola to 1993 and shunting only to a lesser extent exclusively by means of shunting carried out (flat switching) .

Norfolk Southern 1999

The tracks of the Enola Yard of Norfolk Southern 2012, with the Susquehanna River in the background

After the split of Conrail in 1999, the Enola Yard was taken over with a large part of the former PRR lines by the Norfolk Southern Railway , which reinvested in the railway facilities with the increase in freight traffic on the east-west connections at the beginning of the 21st century. A modernized flat station with 16 directional tracks on the north side of the area has been in operation again since 2003, with a daily capacity of around 1200 freight wagons. In 2005 all operated track groups had a total of 79 tracks, the former flat station for traffic in the east direction with its 44 direction tracks is now completely dismantled and wasteland. Norfolk Southern continues to operate a maintenance area for diesel locomotives in the center of Enola Yard , which is located near the old roundhouse; the old turntable is still there.

The former marshalling yard in the city center of Harrisburg was converted into a container terminal by Norfolk Southern and is now used for handling intermodal freight traffic between rail and road traffic .

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Enola Yard  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Lillard: Appalachian Trail Names: Origins of Place Names Along the AT. Stackpole Books, 2002, ISBN 0-8117-2672-X , p. 38.
  2. ^ A b The Fairview Yard, Northern Central and PRR In: Railroad Gazette. Vol. 36, No. 16, 1904, pp. 284 f.
  3. ^ Harrisburg Terminal: Enola Yard. Michael Froio Photography; accessed on July 28, 2019.
  4. ^ A b c d Michael Rhodes: North American Railyards. Voyageur Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-7603-4609-9 , pp. 207-209.
  5. ^ Mitchell Deaver: Transatlantic Railwayman. AuthorHouse, 2015, ISBN 978-1-5049-2056-8 , eBook without page numbers (Chapter 5: Enola).
  6. ↑ Jerry L. Gleason: As the Enola Yard turns 100, it is once again gaining steam. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, Jan. 11, 2005; accessed on July 28, 2019.
  7. ↑ David DeKok: Harrisburg's historic Enola Yard is railroad hub. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, October 13, 2003; accessed on July 28, 2019.
  8. ↑ David DeKok: NS makes improvements at historic Harrisburg yard. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, October 6, 2003; accessed on July 28, 2019.
  9. ^ Norfolk Southern Harrisburg Yard. Norfolk Southern Corp .; accessed on July 28, 2019.