Mill Creek Yard

NG501065

Mill Creek Yard

Infrastructure

The commentary accompanying this picture and the one following will attempt to show the rhyme and reason of the tortuous NYC trackage in the Mill Creek area of downtown Cincinnati (a section said to contain one of the most complex tangles of railroad yards and junctions in the country). The three tracks in the foreground below are, from right to left, the "outbound", the "inbound", and the "side hole". B&O tracks run on the embankment on the right. All tracks in the left foreground and background are part of Mill Creek yard (this is the east end of the yard). The bridge in the background carries Southern Railway tracks from Union Terminal and Gest Street freight yard on the right to the Ohio River bridge on the left. The "outbound" and the "inbound" originate on the west at the B&O connection at Cincinnati Junction (the tower is visible underneath the Southern bridge, just beyond the far end of the string of cars on the embankment ). These two tracks, along with the *side hole", run through a cut known as "the ditch" (behind the camera) on their way east to Wood Street, where they connect with C&O tracks leading up to the latter's Ohio River bridge, and beyond Wood Street to the freight house and various team and industrial tracks further downtown, where they come to a deadend. The junction at Wood street is very important, because it is here that cars traveling in the various across-the-river transfers of the L&N, C&O, and NYC are considered as having been interchanged to or from the NYC. The bridge approach at Wood Street is very steep, and pushers are coupled behind the cabooses of southbound transfers at Mill Creek to assist on this incline. These jobs are called bridge pushers, and are covered alternately for three-month periods by the L&N, C&O, and NYC. When this picture was taken, it was the NYC's turn, and the H-7 pusher in the background was awaiting the arrival, off the B&O via the "inbound", of the next southbound transfer.

Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor

2-1/4x3-1/4 neg

Dec-53

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trackage

359

Cincinnati, OH

See NG501065a