BNSF Barstow Yard

BNSF Barstow Yard

Yard schediagram.
Overview
Main region(s)	San Bernardino County
Fleet size	Freight
Locale	Barstow, California
Dates of operation	19th century (19th century)–
Technical
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Electrification	No
Track length	240 hectares
Operating speed	10 mph

The Barstow Yard is a marshalling yard of the BNSF Railway in Barstow, California. With 48 directional tracks and a total area of 240 hectares, it is the second largest marshalling yard west of the Rocky Mountains after the JR Davis Yard. Today almost all freight traffic to and from Southern California runs through it.

Its beginnings date back to the construction of a southern transcontinental railway connection by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF). At the end of the 19th century, the Mojave Desert had to be crossed, in which an important branch for traffic from the Midwest to San Francisco in the north and to Los Angeles and San Diego in the southwest was created at the site of today's Barstow. In the early 1970s, AT&SF expanded the railway facilities into a large flat station that stretches above the city for nearly eight kilometers along the Mojave River. In 1995, the AT&SF merged with the Burlington Northern Railroad (BN) to form the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF Railway). Today, it operates the transcontinental connection under the name Southern Transcon and in 2019 employed around 1000 people at the marshalling yard in Barstow.

History[]

Railway networks in Southern California and the city of Barstow from the 1870s[]

By 1867, the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP) had completed the western portion of the first transcontinental railroad link between San Francisco , Northern California and Omaha , Nebraska , and expanded into Southern California in the 1870s. It expanded its network from Los Angeles to Yuma on the Colorado River in Arizona . They also built a stretch from Mojave through the desert of the same name to Needles, which is also about 124 miles north of Yuma on the Colorado River. The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad planned between Missouri and California was connected here, the western section of which ran eastwards to Isleta in New Mexico. At the same time, the California Southern Railroad created a line from San Diego in the south via San Bernardino to the SP line at today's Barstow, about 60 miles east of Mojave, from 1880 onwards.^[1] The joint was then called yet Waterman Junction after the later governor of California Robert Waterman , who ran a ranch here and ran several silver mines in the area.^[2][3] During the second phase of the Great Depression from 1873-1896 , the western part of the never completed Atlantic and Pacific - between Needles and Isleta - was reorganized as a subsidiary of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF), which operates its network thereby widened westward over Isleta to Needles; the eastern part became part of the St. Louis - San Francisco Railway . AT&SF also acquired the section through the Mojave Desert from the SP and finally reached the west coast through its subsidiary California Southern.^[4] The Waterman Junction was named in 1886 by the president of the AT&SF William Barstow Strong^[5][6] in Barstow.

Network of AT&SF of 1891, incl. Distance right was a connection from San Francisco to Chicago (left Barstow)

The AT&SF was able to expand its original network from Kansas ( Atchison and Topeka ) to New Mexico ( Albuquerque and Santa Fe ) to the Pacific coast at the end of the 19th century , which extended in the east from 1888 to Chicago in Illinois. It created another transcontinental railroad connection in the south of the USA after the Sunset Route of the SP, which was completed in 1883 and ran further south from Yuma via El Paso to New Orleans . Due to its location at the junction of the routes to San Francisco in the north and to Los Angeles and San Diego in the southwest, Barstow was next to Sacramento one of the most important railway hubs in California at the beginning of the 20th century . After the station building was destroyed by a fire at the end of 1909, AT&SF also built a large railway depot with a roundhouse for 25 steam locomotives and expanded the tracks along the Mojave River into a large marshalling and freight yard. In Northern California, the SP built in 1906 about 15 miles northeast of Sacramento to Roseville Yardwich is the largest marshalling yard in California to this day.

Description[]

The Barstow Yard extends above the town of Barstow for almost 5 miles along the Mojave River and occupies an area of about 600 acres . Following the flow of traffic, the track systems of the flat station are divided from west to east into the following track groups: The arriving freight trains are directed into the entry group (approx. 10 tracks) in the west. The mainline locomotives (line haul) are replaced here by shunting locomotives (switcher) , which move the trains to the drainage mountain and push the freight wagons into the eastward classification bowl (48 tracks) in the center. Here these are put together to form new trains, which are later transported to the departure yard (approx. 10 tracks) in the eastern part, whose tracks are used to change direction to the exit group (approx. 15 tracks) above the direction harp ( pull-out tracks ). Before leaving, mainline locomotives take over the final trains again, whereby several locomotives are usually combined into so-called consists.^[7]

At the end of the west side there is the depot with a maintenance facility for diesel locomotives with six continuous tracks and further systems for refueling and cleaning as well as a turning loop . There is also a maintenance facility for freight cars(three continuous tracks) and several sidings for locomotives between the discharge hill and the exit group. In the north, several busy bypass tracks border the area (BNSF Cajon and Mojave Subdivisions) , which are also used by Amtrak and the Union Pacific.

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  Barstow Yard the road network of Southern California northeast of the Greater Los Angeles Area

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  East side of the classification yard 2012 (view to the west)

In 2018, BNSF invested $27 million dollars in the construction of a container terminal on the south side of the classification yard. Across from the depot, two new one mile loading tracks with an attached storage area for over 600 semi-trailers were put into operation in 2019. With over five million freight containers per year, the BNSF has the largest market share in intermodal freight traffic among the Class I railroad companies and wants to relieve other terminals in Southern California along the Southern Transcon Corridor with the terminal in Barstow, such as including the Hobart Yard in Los Angeles, which is the BNSF's largest container terminal with over a million containers^[8] moved each year. Barstow is on the California road network at the junction of Interstate 15 (north-south) with Interstate 40 and State Route 58 (east-west).^[9]

Air pollution caused by diesel locomotives[]

TOFC train ( trailer on flatcar ) with two diesel locomotives according to Tier 1/2, 40 km southwest of Barstow in 2012.

In 2005, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) signed an agreement with the two largest railroad companies operating in California, BNSF and UP, to reduce particulate matter pollution at marshalling yards in the state by about 20% (Statewide Railyard Agreement).^[10] Part of the agreement was the implementation of health risk assessments for the 17 largest marshalling yards. In 2006, according to the CARB study, over 150,000 diesel locomotives passed Barstow Yard, of which only about 54,000 stopped on the site or were used to operate the marshalling yard. The As a result, Barstow Yard had the highest particulate matter pollution of all Californian marshalling yards in 2006 with 28 tons, which was even higher than that of the larger JR Davis Yard of the UP (25 tons)^[11] due to the immense through traffic. With the tightening of the state's air pollution control requirements in California, the BNSF was forced to renew its fleet of diesel locomotives, and in 2012 84 percent of the more than 6,000 locomotives met the environmental protection agency's Tier 0 emissions standards.^[12] With funding from CARB and in collaboration with GE Transportation Systems examines the BNSF since 2020, inter alia, on a route between Barstow and Stockton the use of battery - electric locomotives in combination with conventional diesel locomotives.^[13][14]

Routes served this yard[]

References[]

External links[]

• BNSF in California. (CA Operating Division Map)
• Photos of Barstow Yard from 1975. ArizonaLorne
• BNSF Barstow Yard Tower Tour HD. Film documentation of the marshalling yard on YouTube.

 WikiMiniAtlas

Coordinates: 34°53′35.5″N 117°04′28.6″W / 34.893194°N 117.074611°W / 34.893194; -117.074611