Classification yard  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump
to: navigation, search North Yard in Denver, Colorado, a typical
U.S. classification yard in 2009 Chicago and North Western
Railway's Proviso Yard in Chicago, Illinois, December 1942.  A
classification yard (American and Canadian English) or
marshalling yard (British, Indian English and Canadian English)
is a railroad yard found at some freight train stations, used to
separate railroad cars on to one of several tracks. First the
cars are taken to a track, sometimes called a lead or a drill.
From there the cars are sent through a series of switches called
a ladder onto the classification tracks. Larger yards tend to
put the lead on an artificially built hill called a hump to use
the force of gravity to propel the cars through the ladder.
Freight trains that consist of isolated cars must be made into
trains and divided according to their destinations. Thus the
cars must be shunted several times along their route in contrast
to a unit train, which