A classification yard, marshalling yard or shunting yard is a railway yard found at some freight train stations, used to separate railway cars onto 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.
Godorf Station, Cologne, Germany
Not all cars can be sent over a classification hump. This Union Pacific track maintenance vehicle is permanently labelled "Do not hump", because it is not designed to withstand hump sorting.
The retarders grip the sides of the wheels on passing cars to slow them down.
CNW towerman R. W. Mayberry operates the retarders at Proviso Yard in Chicago, Illinois, May 1943.
A goods station or freight station is, in the widest sense, a railway station where, either exclusively or predominantly, goods, such as merchandise, parcels, and manufactured items, are loaded onto or unloaded off of ships or road vehicles and/or where goods wagons are transferred to local sidings.
Typical loading platform in goods station in small country town (abandoned)
Reached by a 1.24-mile (2 km) long tunnel, the 1830 Park Lane Goods Terminus at Liverpool's docks was the world's first station built entirely for freight.
Goods station with fan of sidings and hump signals at Rostock, East Germany, 1986
Former goods station at Linz, Austria, shortly before its demolition (circa 2006)
