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

[NW Mailing List]

Abe, that is a hauntingly beautiful photo. Thanks for sharing it (and the explanation of what I was looking at). 

Matt Goodman
Columbus, Ohio

Sent from my mobile

On Jan 13, 2024, at 7:00 AM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:

Thanks to Mr. Ken Miller, who answered my posted query about a retarder classification yard at Bluefield, as follows:

>>> "Here is an excerpt from the N&W Magazine article on the improvements in Bluefield from the July 1954 issue: Between the receiving and forwarding yards is a new car retarder and switching tower which at present controls power switches in the classification yard, replacing cumbersome manual operation of switches. Later, car retarders will be installed just east and west of the new scales." <<<

Well, Now ! This may just answer a question I have had for 60 years ! Attached is a scan of a none-too-good 35 mm negative I made in 1965, using a tripod atop a caboose on one of the Cab Tracks at Bluefield. The view looks eastward and the office building is the East Bluefield Yard Office. The Yardmaster was located near the east end (the far end) of this building, and the very west end (amply illuminated in this photo) was used by the Conductor on a crew called the "Hump Crew" ... but there was no hump there !

At this location, loads of coal from the "Middle Yard" were slowly drifted eastward, cut apart into cuts, and ridden by car riders (Brakemen) to a coupling down in the proper track of the departure yard. The Conductor at this location worked at ground level and had a small lever which governed a small electro-pneumatic track retarder. He used the retarder if slack was required to make a cut. I think there may also have been scale rails at this location, where cars could be weighed on a balance-beam scale. But from my observations the place was far too busy to halt operations to weigh loads one-by-one.

Next, in the photograph find the very tall light standard located to the left (north) of the office building... there are two tracks between the light standard and the yard office.

Next, look immediately beyond that high light standard. Can you make out a tower there? It is a metal-sided, single-floor box-like structure which is perched about 40 feet in the air, on braced lattice-work.

That tower was never used during my years of running into Bluefield (which began in 1964) and I never saw any lights lit in it, nor any persons ascending or descending the stairs. I inquired. but my peers, whom I asked, had no idea why the seemingly unused tower was there.

Do you think this might have been the location of a planned "Hump Retarder Yard," mentioned in the 1958 AAR Signal Section summary? Notice how the front of the tower (i.e. the south, or to the right side, in this photograph) is positioned at the head of two ladder tracks. This would have been a perfect set-up for the humping (or double humping) of coal at this location.

Assuming this tower structure was to have been the proposed control tower for the proposed retarder yard, the next question is: Why was the job never completed, by the installation of retarders and power switches? One theorizes the job was never completed because of the severe recession which occurred beginning in 1957, causing the cancellation of capital projects. As I recall, the recession was severe enough that the railroad did not hire any more Trainmen (at least on the Radford Division,) until late 1962 or early 1963.

So, I am satisfied on two fronts: (1) That mystery tower appearing in a photograph I made 60 years ago, has at last been plausibly explained. And (2) we have explained the rather quizzical listing by the AAR of a retarder classification yard at Bluefield, when nobody remembers one ever having been there !

BTW, I did consult with one friend who had been a Train Master on the Pocahontas 
Division in the 1970s and 1980s, and he had no recollections of a retarder yard having been at Bluefield during his tenure there.

-- abram burnett
--- Satisfied Turnip !
.

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the American Indian, Motherhood, the Luminiferous Ether
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