Davidson Yard life or yard

Railway - one of the largest and most profitable businesses in the US, in addition to the oil industry. Every year railway transported about 1.8 bln. Tons of cargo. Railway network of the country, length of about 225,000 km, railway companies bring a profit of $ 54 billion. Annually.

But the train, carrying loads, do not come from nowhere, they need to form and re-form along the way. For this problem to the entire length of the railway on the big junctions exist marshalling yards.

In Texas, there are two large marshalling yards, owned by Union Pacific - Englewood Yard and the Davidson Yard. The first station is located in Houston and is the largest in Texas. The second screening station is located in Fort Worth, at Dallas. This is a relatively small plant size of America.

A bit of history lives yard. It was founded in the early 1900-x's and at first was not the property of the Union Pacific, a belonged to the Texas & Pacific Railroad Company. After its foundation the station was named after the president of the company - Lancaster Yard.

The station occupies a small area and gradually grew, the benefit at the time, the city of Fort Worth was very young, and free space around the station was a lot.

But if in the early 1900s in the United States had plenty of private companies, over time small companies have started to fade, t. To. To compete with the giants became heavier.

The same fate befell the company Texas & Pacific Railroad, and in 1963 the company bought its competitor - Missouri Pacific Railroad.

The new owner immediately noticed a favorable location for the station and decided to upgrade it. It has been expanded supply routes increased, and increased throughput.

After everything was finished, it was decided to rename the station. And in 1971, the station became known as Centennial Yard. Many older railroaders still call the station by that name.

The future was not very rosy for the company and Missouri Pacific Railroad. In 1984 the company became part of Union Pacific.

The new owner did not upgrade the station, t. To. It meets the requirements of the time. In 2007, the station received its present name "Davidson Yard" in connection with the return of the Chairman of the Board of Directors, whose name is Richard Davidson.

An interesting fact about the station - it was one of the first stations in the United States who began to use glass fiber instead of the usual communication cables (since 1981), and very quickly the station became the main communication hub for the Union Pacific.

Today the station is an important railway hub in America, t. To. All goods from Asia, passing through the ports of California, sent into the country.

All the cargo from California has a common part of the way to Texas, after which the flow of goods to be divided, that is. To. Of Texas loads go to the east, north and north-east directions.

The main flow of goods from California - are containers with various goods.

For example, only one container terminal in Long Beach California, receives each year about 7 million. Containers, sending them into the country.

Each day, about 50 g container. e. compounds leave the territory of the port of Long Beach.

In 2009, Union Pacific began upgrading plant, which continues today. The station is actively reconstructed to increase capacity.

Cargo traffic from California is increasing every year. A few years later the station will no longer have to cope with the flow of cars, and now the company Union Pacific decided to prepare the station before it "choke" freight traffic.

In the next 20 years, freight traffic is expected to grow twice.

Upon completion of the project at the station will be 69 ways of sorting, forming and sending about 100 trains every day.

Well, the principle of operation of the station itself is quite simple. At the station, there are several parks: receiving, sorting departure.

These three park in this case arranged parallel to each other. All trains get to park admission, where they were uncoupled the locomotive mainline and shunting hitch.

Then shunting locomotive pulls the train "in the exhaust pocket", or a path that allows you to withdraw part of the park admission and redirect to further sorting path

This path goes beyond the station, ie. A. A different way to draw part of the nearly one hundred cars will not work.

After that begins the ascent to the composition of the "hill", is a small artificially made to rise above the station level.

Once on top of the "hill" cars are disengaged, singly or in groups.

uncoupling cars roll off the coasts "slides" down to form compounds.

Dispatchers are collected on a computer "theoretical" train in advance, even before the arrival of cars at the station.

Due to the pre-assembled "theoretical" formulations, the process of collecting cars in the compositions after uncoupling is fully automated.

When the car begins to slide down the hill, the first thing it passes through the scanner. On each car is a magnetic label that gives the manager the full information about the car (this tank, covered wagon, platform, and so on. D.), Destination, nature of cargo in it and the empty weight of the car.

After the scanner the car gets on the scale, which measures its weight, and then the computer itself determines in which way you want to send this car.

T. k. Manager has already reached "the future of the train," arrows automatically puts the computer and the car rolls on track.

On the road the car rolling passes through special inhibitors that partially extinguish the car speed.

catch.

Inhibitors are a "brake pads", which clamp the wheel pairs of the car when it passes through them.

Why weigh wagon? The fact that the computer knows how many cars already standing on the tracks, but it is necessary to calculate the braking force for the moderators and slow down the car so that he had enough inertia to roll the other "brothers", but he would not roll too fast.

Wagon according to the load, can be slowed to a towing speed of 1 km / h, a typical rate for the tow cars with nebyuschimsya load - 6 km / h

Passing through retarders wagon "slows down", after which, dokatyvayas to the rest of carriages, it engages with them and slowly on the tracks departure is going to new compositions. Then compiled by the train is transferred to the departure yard and the train continues its journey.

In addition to sorting "hill" at the station is also a train. d. depot, serving as transit locomotives and diesel locomotives operating in the Dallas and Fort Worth.