Types of Yards:

 Passenger yards

 Goods yards

 Marshalling yards

 Locomotive yards

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Passenger Yards:
Function of passenger yard is to provide all the facilities for the safe movement of
passengers.
Facilities in passenger yards:
1) Booking office, enquiry office, luggage booking room, and waiting room for

passengers.
2) Parking space for vehicles.

3) Signals for reception and dispatch of trains.

4) sidings for shunting facilities.

5) Facilities for changing batteries.

6) Facilities for passing a through train.

7) Washing lines facilities.

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Goods Yard:-
1) Provided for receiving, loading and unloading of goods from wagons.

2) Goods yard also known as a goods station or goods depot.

3) It may be paved with gravel, moorum, WBM, bituminous pavement & concrete

pavement.
4) It is widest sense, a railway station which is exclusively used to load & unload goods

from ships or road vehicles and/or where goods wagons are transferred to local
sidings.

Requirements of Goods Yard:

1) Approach road for movement of goods.

2) Sufficient number of platforms for loading & unloading.

3) Sufficient number of godowns.

4) Booking office.

5) Cart weighing machine.

6) Cranes for loading & unloading. 33

Marshalling Yards:-
1) Place where goods wagons received from different centres are sorted out & placed in

order to be detached at different station.

2) The marshalling yards are distribution centres.

3) Empty wagons are also kept in marshalling yards.

4) It is centre where goods wagons are sorted out & isolated wagons are combined to form

a train load.

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Factors For the Efficient Functioning of Marshalling Yards:-
1) Shunting operations should not disturb the regular trains.

2) Should be kept parallel to the running trains.

3) Movement of wagons in one direction only.

4) Repair facilities should be provided on one or more sidings.

5) Connected to all important railway stations.

6) Goods yard should be nearer to the marshalling yard.

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Types of Marshalling Yards:-
1) Flat yard: Flat yards are constructed on flat ground, or on a gentle slope. A flat yard
has no hump, and relies on locomotives for all car movements

2) Gravity yard: The whole yard is set up on a continuous falling gradient and there is
less use of shunting engines. Very large capacity but they need more staff than hump
yards and thus they are the most uneconomical .

3) Hump yard: These are the largest and most effective yards, with the largest shunting
capacity—often several thousand cars a day. The heart of these yards is the hump. A
hump yard has a constructed hill, over which freight cars are shoved by yard
locomotives, and then gravity is used to propel the cars to various sorting tracks

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Locomotive Yards:-
1) This is the yard which houses the locomotives for various facilities such as watering,

fueling, cleaning, repairing, servicing etc.

 Should be located near the passenger and goods yards.

 Water column, Engine shed, Ash pit, inspection pit, repair shed, turn table.

 Hydraulic jack for lifting operations.

 Place for future expansion.

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Reception Siding:-
1) Used to receive the incoming trains. The incoming trains stand on theses sidings and

wait for their turn of shunting operations.

2) The shunting are generally laid in the form of a grid and their lengths kept equal.

Sorting Siding:-
1) Used during shunting operations.

2) Each siding is allotted to wagons bund for one particular direction or destination.

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Station Equipments:-
For efficient running of trains, safety of traffic, repairing, cleaning, examining of
locomotives etc. some equipments and machinery are needed. These equipments are
known as station equipment.

Engine Shed, Water Column, Ash Pit,

Turn Table, Triangle, Buffers Stop,
Fouling Marks, Examination Pits, Traverse,
Derailing Switch, Drop Pits, Scotch Block,
Sand Hump, Weigh Bridge, etc.s

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Engine Sheds:-
1) Railway engine sheds were provided at terminal stations, junctions, and other
locations around the railway.
2) Covered accommodation for servicing locomotives (this could be simple tasks such as

changing brake blocks to more complex task that involved dismantling and repairing
the engine)
3) Types of engine sheds are (i) Rectangular type (ii) Circular type

Rectangular Sheds:-
 In this type of engine shed, two parallel tracks are laid, which meet at one or both the

ends.
 The engine can come from one end and leave the shed in other end.

 They need more space.

 They are widely used in India.

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