It was a little less than five miles from the Y.M.C.A. up to the north end of
"Hemlock Grove" which was the north end of the Hartford Departure Yard.
There were two retardar humps although the West Hump was shut down
very early in the Penn Central scheme of things. Actually the New Haven
tried to get along without it too but a bridge eventually got rebuilt and the
West Hump was reopened.
The yard had a couple of very basic problems, it was never modernized to
the extant that yards on other railroads were so it was rather labor
intensive, there were a lot of switchtenders employed there. Secondly,
the Quinnipiac River ran through the yard so various bridges were needed
and some space could not be used.
Most shifts, there were five different yard masters plus a general yard
master and there were up to six switchtenders too.
As a comparison today, Selkirk has at the most three yardmasters and
electric switches make switchtenders not needed. Selkirk probably
handles more traffic today than Cedar Hill did during the New Haven's
later years.
New Haven in the New Haven Railroad days had a lot of yardmasters, in
addition to the five at Cedar Hill, there was one downtown at Water Street,
one in the passenger yard and an additional one on the last trick and I
think there was one at River Street on one shift as well.
I don't think there has been a yardmaster in Cedar Hill for several years
now. The last one to go was at the East Class Yard.
Noel Weaver