Five Retarder Yards on the N&W - One at Bluefield ?

[NW Mailing List]

 1953 was the year the east yard was extended and the middle yard was also lengthened eastward. The scale house was moved eastward to the new junction between the middle and east yards. So it is possible that retarders could have been installed in connection with the new scale house. But coal cars passing the new scale house were still handled by riders. There was no "hump" as the east end of the middle yard was on a downgrade before and after the extension. BTW: I worked on the east yard extension that summer.
Jim Nichols
    On Tuesday, January 9, 2024 at 11:50:30 AM CST, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:  
 
 A friend who was a Signal Engineer for Union Switch & Signal sent the attached PDF detailing Car Retarder Yards constructed by American Railroads. I forward it to this List because it gives dates for the Retarder Yards at Portsmouth (2,) Roanoke, Lamberts Point and Bluefield.

The mention of a Retarder Yard at Bluefield gives me indigestion. It is shown as having been installed in 1953, having 13 short tracks (22 to 47 car capacities,) a single lead over the hump without scale rails, and as being "Rider Operation Below Hump."

I do not recall having seen such a Retarder Yard at Bluefield. Of course, I was a Brakeman (1964-hire) on the "Black Leg Division" (i.e. the Radford Division) and so never worked west of the top of the grade Mercer Street in Bluefield. And I never saw any trace of such an animal on the east half of Bluefield Yard.

Can anyone comment on this subject? Why would Bluefield need a Retarder Yard or a hump? The place was generally too busy and congested to do much classification of coal and therefore usually sent out coal indiscriminately, to be sorted and blocked at places further to the east and the west. And Bluefield certainly had very minimal other-than-coal freight to classify. And empty hoppers were not switched out for mines according to capacity. So why the need for a Retarder Yard at Bluefield, and where was it located ?


-- abram burnett
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