Railroad Memorabilia

Bellevue, OH - Mad River & NKP Railroad Museum - Railroad Memorabilia I found Interesting… Wonder if it was posted near the Pullman Cars?

"Hump yards are the largest and most effective classification yards, with the largest shunting capacity, often several thousand cars a day. The heart of these yards is the hump—a lead track on a small hill over which an engine pushes the cars. Single cars, or a block of coupled cars, which are uncoupled just before or at the crest of the hump, and roll by gravity onto their destination tracks in the tracks where the cars are sorted, called the classification bowl.

The speed of the cars rolling down from the hump into the classification bowl must be regulated according to whether they are full or empty, heavy or light freight, varying number of axles, whether there are few or many cars on the classification tracks, and varying weather conditions, including temperature, wind speed and direction. As concerns speed regulation, there are two types of hump yards—without or with mechanization by retarders. In the old non-retarder yards braking was usually done in Europe by railroaders who laid skates onto the tracks. The skate or wheel chock was manually (or, in rare cases, mechanically) placed on one or both of the rails so that the treadles or rims of the wheel or wheels caused frictional retardation and resulted in the halting of the railway car. In the United States this braking was done by riders on the cars. In the modern retarder yards this work is done by mechanized "rail brakes" called retarders, which brake the cars by gripping the wheels. They are operated either pneumatically or hydraulically. Pneumatic systems are prevalent in the United States, France, Belgium, Russia and China, while hydraulic systems are used in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands." [Wiki]

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