Cedar Hill Railyard

When Cedar Hill Railyard in New Haven,CT.was built it was 880 acres,154 Miles of track,& could hold 15,000 railcars.
Are the new railyards built now just as large or larger?

Thank You LiL Buddy for the great info. I guess Cedar Hill was big for its time.

LIL BUDDY,
Didn't Bart Tripoli work in The Grove?

Didn't Jimmy Shanks show everyone how it was done, switchin' out The Grove?

Cedar Hill was big but it was not a really modern yard by today's
standards. Three separate retarder towers all had to be manned when-
ever they were humping cars and this was on two different humps if both
humps were operating.
The tracks ran around rivers and waterways, the tracks in the departure
yards were too short for modern trains, the yard was very labor intensive
and it took too many people in order to operate this facility.
Last, the biggest reason that the yard is pretty much not used today is
because New Haven is no longer on the beating path for through freight
trains. The freight bound for New England is mostly off CSX through the
modern facility at Selkirk and via the B & A which connects with the
former New Haven at a number of locations. Many modern freight cars
today can't even get into Cedar Hill due to clearance restrictions, low
bridges, overhead wires and tunnels are the biggest problems.
During the New Haven Railroad days and into the Penn Central period as
well, New Haven and Cedar Hill was a huge freight hub for southern New
England. Today it is a stub end terminal from Springfield with a lesser
operation via the P & W from Worcester via Norwich.
Years ago there were 20 or more yard jobs on each shift, today there are
around 3 jobs left in the whole terminal.
Noel Weaver

But now Pan Am Southern enters the picture...the joint NS/Pan Am venture talking about a secondary mainline from White River Junction to New Haven.
Better times ahead for Cedar Hill?

Today Cedar Hill is an end point meaning that the bulk of the freight
comes in from one point, Springfield. I know the Providence & Worcester
also come into New Haven but most of the stuff terminates either in New
Haven or close by. Cedar Hill still has a small operation by CSX but it is
an isolated operation, the cars come down from Springfield by the
Connecticut Southern. CSX has trackage rights from Cedar Hill to New
York (Croton or Poughkeepsie) on Metro-North as well as Oak Point via
Amtrak through Pelham Bay. They presently have no operation between
Bridgeport and Rings End west of Darien, there is simply no businss and
this is not likely to change.
Although Pan AM has the trackage rights to operate between Springfield
and Cedar Hill, the use of these rights between Berlin and Cedar Hill is
probably not going to happen. Please note, I didn't say never but it is
not very likely. Pan AM does use the rights between Springfield and
Berlin in connection with their operations in the Plainville/Waterbury area.
Noel Weaver

to add to the large Freight yards List:
Lehigh Valley's Manchester yard was quoted: "the largest yard west of the Mississippi" when it was first built in 1892. I think it could hold around 15,000-17,000 cars peak, plus the LCL facility held another 3,000? was it?
I just know that in that yards peak, it was HUGE.
Cheersw.
Sean

Noel Weaver wrote:Although Pan AM has the trackage rights to operate between Springfield and Cedar Hill, the use of these rights between Berlin and Cedar Hill is probably not going to happen.

Additionally, unless at some point the Guilford organization renegotiated the original 1982 agreement between the B&M and Conrail, the only traffic "Pan Am Southern" could handle into Cedar Hill would be intermodal. Conrail retained all general freight rights on the Springfield Line, including rights to all on-line shippers, and of course later transferred them to Connecticut Southern. The B&M did operate a piggyback train out of Cedar Hill for a year or two in the early 80s but it ended shortly after the Guilford takeover. I'm guessing that CSX would not find it in their interests to allow further competition at this point.

Under the 1982 agreement the B&M was also allowed to run general freight traffic to connect with its Connecticut branchlines (which still continues in greatly reduced fashion today) and with the Long Island Rail Road (which would have been handled by Conrail under haulage rights from Cedar Hill, but it never materialized).