Notes on "A Day at the Park Street Yard Office

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Jimmy,
 
Thanks for your comments on Mason Cooper's info concerning Roanoke Terminal and some of the yard crews that operated there. I understand that, if you don't work on the railroad in Roanoke Terminal, as Jimmy & I did, its not likely that you will understand the names of the different yards within the terminal and their different functions. Sometimes radio chatter doesn't always make clear exactly where a certain crew is working. 
 
In Mason's very interesting article in The Arrow, there are a couple of things I would like to mentioned to clarify the operations there. There was reference to the Classification Yard as being on the south side of the yard, and west of, Park Street (5th Street bridge). That is the "Forwarding Yard", which extends west to 15th Street. The Classification Yard is the "bowl" yard extending between the Hump and 15th Street. The Receiving Yard (which Jimmy correctly identifies by its local name - "Big Hopper" yard) extends westward from the Hump to its termination across from the Material Yard. Inbound trains that need to be humped, or otherwise switched, are yarded in this yard. Then they are shoved eastward to the hump, where the cars are humped in the bowl (or Class Yard). Then the "40" crews at 15th Street make up outbound trains by doubling together the tracks in the Class Yard, according to their destination, and take them down the Forwarding
 Yard to Park Street. Note: I have been speaking in the present tense, but, as you know, NS has recently discontinued their Hump operation in Roanoke.
 
The north side of the yards at 5th Street are called "Park Street Yard". This is where the "delivery" crews classify their cars and gather the cars that need to be delivered to local industries. That is what the lead photo (#835) of Mason's article is doing. The only thing is that it isn't the "B" Crew. Perhaps he heard the "B" Crew call Randolph Street Tower asking permission to switch, but the "B" Crew was a South Yard crew. There were two daylight jobs that reported at Park Street Yard Office. The 6:30 Warehouse Crew, which generally ran west through the Forwarding Yard to 15th St. to pick-up "delivery" cars that had been humped the night before. They would return to Park St. Yard, where they would switch them out (classify) for delivery by the other crews. Sometimes, time permitting, they might work a couple of sidings close by. The 7:00 North Delivery crew would gather the cars they needed for the day and then went (usually) North, to work the local
 industries. The Empty Side Yard, which extended from 24th Street to the extreme west end of the yard was explained by Jimmy in his thread below.
 
I checked my Time Book for the day that Mason was at Park Street. I had worked until 11:30 the night before, and didn't work again until 11:30 the night of June 5th. So I was most likely sleeping most of the day Mason was there. Several days later, I did work the 3:15 "Passenger Station Crew" using the 835. No, we didn't work the passenger station, that was just a hold-over name from the past.
 
Thanks for all this good coverage on the Terminal!!
 
Jeff Sanders
 
 

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 From: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
To: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> 
Sent: Saturday, July 20, 2013 10:03 AM
Subject: Notes on "A Day at the Park Street Yard Office
  

Reading through Mason Cooper's article about "A Day at the Park Street Yard Office", I would like to pass on the following;

Page 8 refers to a "decidedly overpowered" Glasgow Turn with MoW cars in tow.
There obviously was not a unit train of empty hoppers to be returned to the C&O at Glasgow this day (It would hard to say where the MoW cars were to be set off on line). All of that power would be needed to move a train of about 100 loads of coal off of the passing siding at Glasgow to Roanoke.

A caption on page 9 refers to train #40.
I have been at a loss as to why Mason refers to shifters on the Roanoke District as having numbers? Those of us that worked there never knew these trains to have any number at all. They were always known by their names.
Appo Turn - Worked between Roanoke and "Appo" (A control point signal near MP H184 a mile north of the station at Buena Vista.) The grade north out of town was known as Appo Hill.
Buch Shifter - Worked between Roanoke and Buchanan serving the limestone quarries between MP H213 & H212.
1st & 2nd TV shifters - Working between Roanoke and Lone Star Cement Co. at the end of the Cloverdale Branch.
Only later on in life, after the train clearances started coming over the printer, did these shifters get assignment numbers (V80 for the Buchanan job and V81 for the cement job). By then the Appo Turn had been abolished.

A mention was made to "1040" crew.
The yard crews working the hump bowl was known as the "40" crews. The correct pronunciation for these crews would be Eight-Forty, Nine-Forty and Ten-Forty.

Top caption on page 13 says the train is making its way to the empty side yard. Being that the cars in the train are freight rather than empty coal hoppers and there are only two small units, the train is more likely to be making its way toward the westbound running track to the hump and then out the receiving or as everyone knows it, the "Big Hopper Yard". The "Empty Side Yard", being that most of them were the longest tracks in the north yard, was mostly reserved for long empty hopper trains. Long auto rack and unit coal trains could also be found there too.

Jimmy Lisle


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