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Deserted WG Tower at the west end, bay window caboose in view
Vandals and vacant buildings mean trouble anywhere, and so it was with WG tower after the control apparatus was removed. The brick building, once reasonably attractive in a functional way, has become an eyesore, its interior not only wrecked but also…
Looking east at the west end
Yard leads at the west end of Elkhart connect with the main tracks at a remote interlocking called "WG," controlled from B tower, 4.9 miles east. This is WG looking east, with the yard leads (2) in the foreground and the main tracks adjacent.…
11 track local yard
One supplementary facility not generally available at hump yards is a separate yard for making up local freights. The results are either that locals are delayed and production is slowed while these cars are handled in pullout areas, or that the…
West end of the class yard
The west end yardmaster gets this view of the pullout operation he controls as he looks out of the east window of the west end yard office, located immediately north of the car shop. Groups one through four are dead ahead, and the eastbound departure…
Classification tracks
Looks like an awful lot of room, but big yards attract traffic and traffic in modern times is carried in longer and longer cars, so that what in the beginning was plentiful class yard capacity at Elkhart changed later to adequate and more recently to…
72 track class yard
Eight groups of nine tracks each comprise the class yard at Elkhart. South and north bypass tracks flank the hump lead; westbound departure yard, cleanout tracks, and inbound freight lead are adjacent to the south (left, above), and eastbound…
Westbound departure yard and caboose tracks
The aforementioned footbridge was built to carry pedestrian traffic between the hump and the YMCA at times such as this, when long eastbounds on the receiving yard lead are pulling slowly by while a yard clerk records the consists from the TV…
Diesel cab units being serviced
Here are the diesel shop and fueling facilities as viewed from the upper floor of the hump building. At the pumps are F7s 1870-2455-1679, in off an extra from Toledo, and farther down on the same service track are Alcos 10323308-1077 off BC-5; on the…
Pacemaker boxcars rolling down
A more panoramic view of the hump is available from the retarder operator's room at the top of the six-story retarder building. BC-5 from Buffalo is coming up the hill out of receiving yard track 3. Beyond the fueling station, occupied by a stray F7…
Looking at Panama Yard
On the west side of the footbridge, the scene includes a portion of the Panama yard in the foreground and (beyond the shanty) the hump yard, in which two U-class engines are working (at the time, this yard was devoted primarily to storage of grain…
Looking into Detroit Yard
The aforementioned Detroit yard is on the left, with the auto frames stacked in gondolas identifying train CD-1, a Cleveland-Detroit manifest receiving most of its traffic at Rockport Yard through which the Midland-Ross frame business is handled…
Old Westbound Yard
Again from the second floor of Central Avenue yard office, this time looking to the north, we see the old Westbound yard and main line cutting across Central Avenue. The Old Westbound yard is used for storage and for making up northbound Bay City…
View into Glory Yard
Central Avenue is overpassed in two places by Junction Yard trackage. The bridge carrying the eastbound class yard leads, shown on the preceding page, is about a block south of the westbound hump lead bridge photographed here. In the right background…
View into Junction Yard
The downtown Detroit skyline and the Ambassador Bridge across the Detroit River form the backdrop for this view of Junction Yard as seen from a second-floor window of Central Avenue yard office. Central Avenue is directly below, and beyond it is the…
View into Junction Yard
This is the east end of Junction Yard, Detroit's major freight classification facility, as seen from the yardmaster's shanty at Livernois Avenue. The DetroitChicago main line is on the far right. Humper 8701 (with slug 453) is shoving towards the…