ALYTH HUMP YARD wmv

This video is digitized from an 8mm camcorder tape, shot during a visit to the CPR Hump Tower by our railfan club, late evening of 19 July 1990.

Alyth Yard, much nearer to the Calgary downtown core and dating back several decades, now concentrates mainly on repairs and run-through manifest trains, many which are unit trains (all the same commodity for the same area)

Around 2012-2013, CPR built a brand new intermodal facility in an industrial area in the southern part of the city and closed the hump yard; although the marshalling yard remains open and extremely active.

A railroad hump is a structure (usually dirt) within a yard, where freight cars are classified by destination, using gravity. Powerful locomotives push a sting of railcars which have just arrived, up one side of ta small incline and, after being uncoupled, they roll freely down the other side into a track specifically selected by the Hump Tower to join others for the same destination in a future train. On an average day, Alyth Hump Yard handled about 2,200 cars.

After reaching the downside of the hill, the cars are still rolling fast and must be slowed down, so they don’t bump violently into the other cars on the same track already stopped. The “retarders” work by friction, calculated by a computer in the hump tower, as to speed and weight, bringing car(s) to a manageable coupling speed at the end.

Due to a change in CPR handling techniques, the Alyth Hump Yard was closed 2012-13; as new intermodal yard opened in a more remote industrial part of Calgary, away from habitation. Google Earth views at the end of the presentation show the present state (2017-18); with a stump of track in front of the hump tower, now separated from the array. Alyth Hump Yard was 69 hectares (about ¼ square mile).

Enjoy the video, and thanks for watching an event which happened 2 decades ago, when freight cars were not yet covered with “art”.