JR Davis Yard

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JR Davis Yard
Aerial view facing SW : on the left the approach group , on the right the
depot , in the background the directional harp
Data
Operating point type Marshalling yard
Design Through station
opening 1908
location
Place / district Roseville
State California
Country United States
Coordinates 38 ° 43 '53 "  N , 121 ° 18' 34"  W Coordinates: 38 ° 43 '53 "  N , 121 ° 18' 34"  W.
List of train stations in the United States
i16 i16 i18

The JR Davis Yard (short Davis Yard ) is a marshalling yard of the Union Pacific Railroad (UP) in Roseville , California . With 55  directional tracks and a total area of ​​365  hectares, it is the largest marshalling yard west of the Rocky Mountains , through which 95 percent of freight traffic to and from Northern California runs today . Its origins go back to the Roseville Yard of the Southern Pacific Company (SP), which was built at the beginning of the 20th century on the route of the First Transcontinental Railroad about 25 kilometers northeast of Sacramento at the foot of the Sierra Nevada . He made a significant contribution to the development of the city of Roseville and has over 1000 employees to date. In the 1950s, the marshalling yard was completely rebuilt and modernized for the first time. In 1996, the Union Pacific Railroad took over the SP and expanded the marshalling yard into its main freight hub in Northern California. Upon completion in May 1999, it renamed it JR Davis Yard in honor of the former Vice Chairman and President of the UP .

history

First Transcontinental Railroad 1864

The First Transcontinental Railroad was built from 1863 to 1869 between California and Nebraska ( Central Pacific )Carré rouge.JPGCarré rouge.JPG
JR Davis Yard (California)
Lincoln
Lincoln
Folsom
Folsom
Sacramento
Sacramento
San Francisco
San Francisco
los Angeles
los Angeles
Truckee
Truckee
Hawthorne
Hawthorne
Donner Pass
Donner Pass
Reno
Reno
Winnemucca
Winnemucca
Electrolytic capacitor
Electrolytic capacitor
Redding
Redding
Roseville Blue pog.svg at the foot of the Sierra Nevada

Between 1863 and 1869 the first transcontinental railroad connection between California and the settlement areas on the Missouri River in eastern Nebraska was established in the USA . The two main routes were built by the Union Pacific Railroad in the east (1746 km) and the Central Pacific Railroad in the west (1110 km). The driving force behind the Central Pacific was the railway engineer Theodore Judah , who proposed the construction of a rail link through the Sierra Nevada as early as the mid-1850s . With the support of investors later known as the "Big Four" , the Central Pacific was founded in 1861. From 1863 she built the route between Sacramento and Promontory Summit near Salt Lake City in Utah . Starting from Sacramento in an eastward direction, the workers laid the tracks in what is now Roseville in 1864 and crossed the north-south route of the California Central Railroad between Lincoln and Folsom . The place then known as Junction developed into the city of Roseville . By 1867 the route was completed over the Donner Pass of the Sierra Newada and continued until 1869 via Reno and on through Nevada to Utah, where it was connected with the eastern part of the Union Pacific; the section to San Francisco was built by the Western Pacific Railroad , which became part of the Central Pacific in 1870.

The "Big Four" expanded their monopoly in the transportation business in the western United States with the acquisition of Southern Pacific Railroad in 1870 and in 1885 reorganized the two large companies Central Pacific and Southern Pacific as Southern Pacific Company (SP), although the actual merger did not take place until 1959 was carried out. The small north-south connection of California Central was taken over in 1868 by the Oregon and California Railroad , which in turn was under the control of the Southern Pacific and thus later also became part of the railway empire of the "Big Four"; the connection from Roseville to Folsom was discontinued in 1868.

Roseville Yard on the Southern Pacific 1906

The Roseville Yard of the Southern Pacific in 1910, looking north towards Roseville, one of the roundhouse on the left

With the increase in rail traffic at the beginning of the 20th century, around five passenger and ten freight trains per day ran on the single-track connection between California and Utah. To increase the capacity by means of longer trains, the sidings on the mountain route to Truckee had to be extended from 1906 . In this context , the SP relocated the depot at the foot of the Sierra Newada from Rocklin to Roseville, where a large marshalling yard was also built. At Roseville Yard , the long trains coming from Sacramento could be split up for the ascent into the mountains or in the opposite direction put together to form longer trains across the flat Sacramento Valley . Here was also the junction with the compound of Oregon and California Railroad to the north, the Lincoln and Redding to Portland in Oregon led (Shasta Route) , resulting in better control flows of freight to the east and north was possible. By 1910, railway systems with over 80 kilometers of track and two roundhouse sheds for 32 steam locomotives each,  as well as other buildings and systems , were built southwest of Roseville . This included an ice cream factory owned by the refrigerated truck operator Pacific Fruit Express, which was jointly founded by the SP and UP . This was built at the marshalling yard from 1907 and later expanded into the world's largest production facility for block ice . With a daily production capacity of 400 tons and a storage capacity of 30,000 tons, it was possible to stock over 250 refrigerated railcars at the same time around the clock in the 1920s; the plant existed until the mid-1970s.

The Roseville Yard significantly promoted the development of Roseville, whose population had risen to over 6000 by the end of the 1920s. At that time, the Southern Pacific employed over 1200 people on its extensive rail operations. The freight traffic of the SP became increasingly important and its share of the turnover of the railway company rose between 1921 and 1940 from 67% to 81%, with the route from Roseville to Ogden in Utah being the most frequented; the flow of goods to the east outweighed that to California. At the beginning of the 1950s, the SP modernized the Roseville Yard and built an automated flat station with one after the other track fields in the direction of the main direction of freight traffic, which is here from southwest to northeast in an approach group with 21 tracks, a directional harp with 49 tracks and an exit group with also 21 tracks divided. The roundhouse for the steam locomotives at the northern end of the exit group was replaced by a maintenance hall (rectangular shed) for diesel locomotives by the early 1960s .

1973 railway accident

Remnants of the ammunition transport in April 1973 in which 18 bombs loaded freight car on the Southwest side of the marshalling yard exploded.

In the morning hours of April 28, 1973, a freight train from Hawthorne , Nevada, partially loaded with ammunition , reached the drive-in group in the southwestern part of Roseville Yard . The SP transported in the more than 100 cars long train for the United States Air Force with 21  boxcars than 7,000  aerial bombs of type Mk-81 , which for loading on the USNS Private Francis X. McGraw were determined and the Vietnam War should be used . A fire emanating from the brakes of the wagons triggered the first explosion in a series lasting over 32 hours at around 8 a.m., which destroyed 18 freight wagons and severely damaged large parts of the track system and the neighboring village of Antelope . This sometimes resulted in craters over ten meters deep. Since Antelope and parts of Roseville were evacuated after the first explosions, no people were killed and there were only 38 mostly slightly injured.

During renovation work on the track system, eight unexploded aerial bombs from 1973 were found at the end of 1997, which had been overlooked by the clearance teams of the Air Force. To remove the ammunition, which was more than 20 years old, around 400 people from the surrounding villages and the marshalling yard had to be evacuated temporarily; the defusing was carried out by military personnel from Moffett Field .

Acquisition by Union Pacific in 1996

Diesel locomotives in the livery of the UP and SP at Davis Yard in 2005

With the expansion of the road network in the USA, passenger and freight transport increasingly shifted to the road, 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. The holding companies of Southern Pacific and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , Southern Pacific Company and Santa Fe Industries , were taken over on December 23, 1983 by the newly formed Santa Fe Southern Pacific Corporation (SFSP Corp). A merger of the two railway companies was requested, but could never be carried out due to reservations of the Interstate Commerce Commission against a monopoly position and finally led in 1988 to the sale of the SP to Rio Grande Industries . In 1996, the Union Pacific Railroad finally took over the Southern Pacific; the Santa Fe Pacific Corporation merged in late 1995 with the Burlington Northern Railroad to today's BNSF Railway (Burlington Northern Santa Fe).

After the takeover, the UP decided to expand the Roseville Yard into the main hub for freight traffic in Northern California . By May 1999 the track systems of the marshalling yard had been completely rebuilt for 142 million  US dollars , with the main focus being on the extension of the individual track fields. After the modernization in the 1950s, the direction tracks could only accommodate around 30 freight wagons; today, up to 80 wagons can be put together on the central tracks. In order to design the entry and exit group for trains of almost three kilometers in length, the original arrangement of the track fields, one after the other, was abandoned; the foothills of the two groups now enclose the track harp in the center (55 directional tracks ) and the trains are between the groups via corresponding pull-out tracks transferred. The renovation created the largest marshalling yard west of the Rocky Mountains , through which 95 percent of freight traffic to and from Northern California now runs. In honor of the former Vice Chairman and President of UP Jerry R. Davis , it was renamed JR Davis Yard after completion . The BNSF Railway operates the Barstow Yard in the Mojave Desert on an area of ​​about 240 hectares in Southern California, the second largest marshalling yard (48 directional tracks).

description

Structure of Davis Yard, in the northeast the city of Roseville (top right) encloses the facilities. The City Yard and Rockpile Yard serve as additional entry and exit points. Exit group.

The JR Davis Yard extends with a width of about 300-500 meters from southwest to northeast over almost seven kilometers and covers an area of ​​365  hectares . In the following, the elongated area is divided into a southern and northern part by an imaginary center line for orientation. Following the flow of traffic, the track systems of the flat station are divided into the drive-in group in the southern part, into which the arriving freight trains are introduced from the southwest (from the direction of Sacramento) or from the northeast (from the direction of Nevada or Oregon). The mainline locomotives (line haul) are replaced here by shunting locomotives (switcher) , which transport the trains - or parts of them - over pull-out tracks to the southwest in front of the drainage mountain and then push the freight wagons in the opposite direction into the directional harp in the center . Here these are put together into new train groups, which are later transported to the exit group in the northern section. The final moves can be combined here from several train groups. Before leaving, mainline locomotives take over the trains again, whereby several locomotives are usually combined into so-called consists .

Entrance of the California Zephyr into the Amtrak station in Roseville, on the left in the background the Davis Yard depot (2011, view to the southwest)

The inputs and Ausfahrgruppe each have eight tracks from an average of 2.7 km long and surround the central direction harp from 55 through 800 meter long sorting tracks . Up until 1999, the conventional track brakes ( bar brakes ) were replaced by modern Dowty retarders behind the drainage hill . In addition, there are two smaller track groups for local freight traffic in the southern part, the Rockpile Yard (three tracks) and the City Yard (13 tracks), which can also be used as additional entry and exit groups for train formation in the directional harp.

The depot is located in the northeast opposite the approach group . A large rectangular shed with five continuous tracks and three butt tracks is used to maintain the diesel locomotives . This is also followed by track systems and facilities for washing, refueling and testing the locomotives as well as for putting together the consists . In addition to the formation of trains in the marshalling yard, with a daily throughput of up to 2,000 freight wagons, over 46,000 mainline diesel locomotives pass through Davis Yard every year (as of 2004). Around 31,000 of these are serviced at the depot (just under 10,000 are only refueled). More happen about 15,000 as part of train sets, the plants in the northern part along the bypass tracks, among other things, from the Amtrak -Personenzug California Zephyr are used. This also stops in Roseville, which today is part of the Sacramento metropolitan area with over 100,000 inhabitants ; the Amtrak station is just in front of the Davis Yard maintenance hangar entrance .

Air pollution from diesel locomotives

EPA emission standards for mainline diesel locomotives
(as of 2008, 40 CFR Parts 9, 85, et al. § 1033.101)
Emission standard (To) year of construction Nitrogen oxides
NO x in g / kWh 		Fine dust
PM in g / kWh
Tier 0 1973-1992 10.7 0.30
Tier 1 1993-2004 09.9 0.30
Tier 2 2005-2011 07.4 0.13
Tier 3 2012-2014 07.4 0.13
Tier 4 2015+ 01.7 0.04

With the expansion of the marshalling yard at the end of the 20th century and the associated increase in freight traffic in the region, there were increased concerns among the population about a possible health risk from the exhaust gases from around 100 diesel locomotives that run daily . The California Air Resources Board (CARB) therefore carried out a large-scale study to investigate air pollution between December 1999 and November 2000 . This showed an annual pollution of 25 tons of fine dust , which particularly affected the northern areas next to the depot, the exit group and the directional harp. For comparison, the total traffic-related fine dust pollution in Germany in 2000 was 1.1 million tons (2017: 453,300 tons). With the tightening of the state's air pollution control regulations in California, the Union Pacific was forced to renew its fleet of diesel locomotives and, among other things, to reduce the idle times of the locomotives by retrofitting stop-start systems .

Diesel locomotive from GETS at the marshalling yard 2011
 UP 5250: ES44AC from 2006 ( EPA Tier 2)
Several generations of EMD diesel locomotives in the marshalling yard in 2014
 UPY 587: EMD GP15-1 1976
 UP 4456: EMD SD70M of 2001 ( EPA Tier 1)
 UP 9927: EMD SD32ECO / SD59MX of 2014
 (converted SD60M 1991, EPA Tier 2)

In 2012, around 80 percent of the UP's 8,000 diesel locomotives met the Environmental Protection Agency Tier 0-3 emissions standards . By 2014, for example, the UP had 27 older SD60Ms from the 1990s converted by EMD into the SD59MX type (UP 9900–9927) that comply with the Tier 2 emissions standard. One of the mainline locomotives (UP 9900) was expanded into a test locomotive with funding from CARB until 2012 in order to use suitable methods for exhaust aftertreatment to test the achievement of the strict Tier 4 emissions standard, which since 2015 has further reduced nitrogen oxides and the Fine dust prescribes. The test phase took place from Davis Yard within a radius of several hundred kilometers. One of the first Tier 4 new developments was the ET44AC of the Evolution Series from GE Transportation Systems , which achieved the high emission standard through exhaust gas recirculation systems . In 2015, UP acquired the first of 200 diesel locomotives of the comparable type ET44AH (UP 2570–2769), which are used specifically in California. Between 2000 and 2017, UP invested a total of around US $ 8.5 billion in the renewal of the fleet and thus achieved a share of 96% in locomotives according to the Tier 0-4 emission standard in 2017.

After successful testing of the first prototype of a Tier 4 shunting locomotive, UP was the first Class 1 railway company to order ten of the EMD24B type from Progress Rail Locomotive in early 2018 . These were converted EMD GP38 from the 1960s, which were equipped with new engines and, by means of selective catalytic reduction, also comply with the emission standard for shunting locomotives. They are intended for use in the Sacramento area including the Davis Yard , which is where all maintenance is performed.

See also

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Debo Galloway: "Theodore Dehone Judah - Railroad Pioneer. In: Civil Engineering. Vol. 11, Nos. 10 and 11, 1941, pp. 586-588 and 648-651.
  2. ↑ a b Railroad. Roseville Historical Society, accessed June 16, 2019.
  3. ^ Roseville Historical Society: Roseville. Arcadia Publishing, 2010, ISBN 978-0-7385-7029-7 , p. 9.
  4. ^ A b Southern Pacific Improvements. In: Engineering Record, Building Record and Sanitary Engineer. Vol. 56, No. 24, 1907, pp. 649 f.
  5. ^ John W. Snyder: Southern Pacific Railroad Shasta Route, Roseville to Black Butte, CA, Roseville, Placer County, CA. Historic American Engineering Record , HAER CA-220, National Park Service, San Francisco 1998.
  6. ^ Roseville Historical Society: Roseville. Arcadia Publishing, 2010, ISBN 978-0-7385-7029-7 , p. 15.
  7. ^ Roseville Yard of the Southern Pacific. In: Railroad Gazette. Vol. 43, No. 26, 1907, p. 783.
  8. ^ Roseville Historical Society: Roseville. Arcadia Publishing, 2010, ISBN 978-0-7385-7029-7 , pp. 25-30.
  9. ^ Don L. Hofsommer: The Southern Pacific, 1901–1985. Texas A&M University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-60344-127-8 , p. 126.
  10. ^ A b c d Michael Rhodes: North American Railyards. Voyageur Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-7603-4609-9 , pp. 64-68.
  11. ↑ Historical Aerial Photograph Roseville, Sarcamento County, California, 1966. Aerial Archives, Alamy Stock Photo, accessed June 18, 2019.
  12. ^ Historic Aerials Viewer. Nationwide Environmental Title Research (see Roseville, California photographs from 1947, 1957, and 1964), accessed June 22, 2019.
  13. ^ Train explosion remembered. Gold Country Media, March 24, 2011, accessed June 18, 2019.
  14. ^ Department of Defense Appropriations for 1974: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations. House of Representatives, Ninety-third Congress, First Session, Part 5, 1974, p. 612.
  15. ↑ The Roseville Explosion. United States District Court for the Eastern District of California Historical Society, November 5, 2015, accessed June 18, 2019.
  16. ^ Roseville Historical Society: Roseville. Arcadia Publishing, 2010, ISBN 978-0-7385-7029-7 , p. 24.
  17. ↑ Jonathan Gudel: This Month in Cal OES History: 1973 Railroad Explosion. ( Memento June 12, 2019 on the Internet Archive ) California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, April 19, 2016.
  18. ↑ John Howard: Eight more bombs found in railroad yard near Sacramento. AP News, October 19, 1997, accessed June 18, 2019.
  19. ↑ Jeff Wilson, Randy Rehberg: The Historical Guide to North American Railroads. Kalmbach Media, 2014, ISBN 978-0-89024-970-3 , pp. 278 f.
  20. ^ JR Davis Yard, Roseville, California. Union Pacific Railroad. Retrieved June 20, 2019.
  21. ↑ a b Ron Hand, Pingkuan Di, Anthony Servin, Larry Hunsaker, Carolyn Suer: Roseville Rail Yard Study. California Air Resources Board, State of California, 2004, p. 24 fu A-2.
  22. ↑ Ron Hand, Pingkuan Di, Anthony Servin, Larry Hunsaker, Carolyn Suer: Roseville Rail Yard Study. California Air Resources Board, State of California, 2004, pp. 27-30.
  23. ↑ Environmental Protection Agency: Control of Emissions of Air Pollution From Locomotive Engines and Marine Compression-Ignition Engines Less Than 30 Liters per Cylinder; Republication; Final rule. 40 CFR Parts 9, 85, et al., Federal Register, Vol. 73, No. 126, Monday, June 30, 2008, p. 37199.
  24. ↑ Ron Hand, Pingkuan Di, Anthony Servin, Larry Hunsaker, Carolyn Suer: Roseville Rail Yard Study. California Air Resources Board, State of California, 2004, pp. 1-10.
  25. ↑ Emissions of selected air pollutants according to source category. Federal Environment Agency, national trend tables for the German reporting of atmospheric emissions since 1990, emissions development from 1990 to 2017 (status 02/2019). Retrieved December 28, 2019.
  26. ↑ Robert G. Ireson, M. Jon Germer, Lanny A. Schmid: Development of Detailed Railyard Emissions to capture activity, Technology, and Operational Changes. In: 14th Annual International Emission Inventory Conference. Las Vegas, Nevada, 2005.
  27. ↑ An idling threat. Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, April 11, 2005. Retrieved June 26, 2019.
  28. ^ Harry Stevens: Union Pacific Delivers Cargo Load of Innovation to Meet EPA Emissions Standards. TriplePundit, December 18, 2012. Retrieved June 26, 2019.
  29. ^ Union Pacific locomotive roster. Trains Magazine, 2015. Retrieved June 26, 2019.
  30. ↑ Final Report: EMD Tier 4 (PM) Aftertreatment Upgrade on a Line Haul Locomotive, FY 2010–2012. Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District, Electro-Motive Diesel Inc. (EMD) and Union Pacific Railroad (UP), August 31, 2012.
  31. ^ Union Pacific Railroad Unveils Experimental Locomotive to Test Emissions-Reduction Technology. Union Pacific Railroad, News Release, August 22, 2012. Retrieved June 26, 2019.
  32. ^ Union Pacific locomotive roster. thedieselshop.us, 2019. Retrieved June 27, 2019.
  33. ^ California Dreamin ': New Locomotives Take Clean Air Tech from Theory to Reality. Union Pacific Railroad, Inside Track, November 21, 2016. Retrieved June 27, 2019.
  34. ↑ Jeff Stagl: Fleet Stats 2017: Class Is won't be acquiring many rail cars or locomotives this year. Progressive Railroading, August 2017. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
  35. ^ Union Pacific orders low-emission shunters. Railway Gazette, May 3, 2018. Retrieved June 26, 2019.
This article was added to the list of excellent articles in this version on January 11, 2020 .