Rail yard in the context of "West Side Yard"

The Alaska Railroad (reporting mark ARR) is a Class II railroad that operates freight and passenger trains in the state of Alaska. The railroad's mainline runs between Seward on the southern coast and Fairbanks, near the center of the state. It passes through Anchorage and Denali National Park, to which 17% of visitors travel by train.

The railroad has 656 miles (1,056 km) of track, including sidings, rail yards and branch lines. The main line between Seward and Fairbanks is over 470 miles (760 km) long. The branch to Whittier conveys freight railcars interchanged with the contiguous United States via rail barges sailing between the Port of Whittier and Harbor Island in Seattle.

The main line, or mainline in American English, of a railway is a track that is used for through trains or is the principal artery of the system from which branch lines, yards, sidings, and spurs are connected. It generally refers to a route between towns, as opposed to a route providing suburban or metro services. It may also be called a trunk line, for example the Grand Trunk Railway in Canada, or the Trunk Line in Norway.

For capacity reasons, main lines in many countries have at least a double track and often contain multiple parallel tracks. Main line tracks are typically operated at higher speeds than branch lines and are generally built and maintained to a higher standard than yards and branch lines. Main lines may also be operated under shared access by a number of railway companies, with sidings and branches operated by private companies or single railway companies.

Transloading, also known as cross-docking, is the process of transferring a shipment from one mode of transportation to another. It is most commonly employed when one mode cannot be used for the entire trip, such as when goods must be shipped internationally from one inland point to another. Such a trip might require transport by truck to an airport, then by airplane overseas, and then by another truck to its destination; or it might involve bulk material (such as coal) loaded to rail at the mine and then transferred to a ship at a port. Transloading is also required at railroad break-of-gauge points, since the equipment can not pass from one track to another unless bogies are exchanged.

Since transloading requires handling of the goods, it causes a higher risk of damage. Therefore, transloading facilities are designed with the intent of minimizing handling. Due to differing capacities of the different modes, the facilities typically require some storage facility, such as warehouses or rail yards. For bulk goods, specialized material handling and storage are typically provided (as, for example, in grain elevators). Intermodal transport limits handling by using standardized containers, which are handled as units and which also serve for storage if needed.

A classification yard (American English, as well as the Canadian National Railway), marshalling yard (British, Hong Kong, Indian, and Australian English, and the former Canadian Pacific Railway) or shunting yard (Central Europe) is a railway yard used to accumulate railway cars on one of several tracks. First, a group of cars is taken to a track, sometimes called a lead or a drill. From there, the cars are sent through a series of switches (turnouts), termed a ladder, on to the classification tracks. Some larger yards may put the lead on an artificially built hill termed a hump to use the force of gravity to propel the cars through the ladder.

Freight trains that consist of unrelated cars must be made into a train grouped according to their destinations; this shunting is done at the starting point. Some trains (US: "wayfreights") drop and pick up cars along their route in classification yards or at industrial sidings. This is in contrast is a single-product unit train that carries, for example, automobiles from the factory to a port, or coal from a mine to the power plant.

Potomac Yard is a neighborhood in Northern Virginia that straddles southeastern Arlington County and northeastern Alexandria, Virginia, located principally in the area between U.S. Route 1 and the Washington Metro Blue Line /Yellow Line tracks, or the George Washington Memorial Parkway, depending on the definition used. The area was home to (and takes its name from) what was once one of the busiest rail yards on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. The "Potomac Yard" name is also used to refer to several developments in the area, especially the Potomac Yard Center power center and a Washington Metro station.

In 2018, Amazon.com, Inc. announced plans to locate part of its "HQ2" second headquarters project in Northern Virginia, specifically in the newly re-branded cross-jurisdictional neighborhood of National Landing, which local and state officials said would include Potomac Yard as well as nearby parts of southern Arlington, including the Crystal City neighborhood that will be the hub of the HQ2 development. Amazon initially planned to split HQ2 between National Landing and Long Island City, New York, but opposition from New York officials led Amazon to cancel that portion of the project, leaving National Landing as the only HQ2 site.

A coal pier is a transloading facility designed for the transfer of coal between rail and ship.

The typical facility for loading ships consists of a holding area and a system of conveyors for transferring the coal to dockside and loading it into the ship's cargo holds. Originally the holding area consisted of a rail yard in which the loaded cars were sorted by grade and held until needed for loading. Modern facilities are more likely to unload the cars immediately (for example, with rotary car dumpers) and store the coal in piles until the ship is loaded. This frees up the cars for immediate reuse and obviates rail yard maintenance.

Enola is a census-designated place (CDP) located along the Susquehanna River in East Pennsboro Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 6,111 at the 2010 census. Norfolk Southern operates Enola Yard, a large rail yard and locomotive shop in Enola. It is situated in Cumberland County, directly across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg and is part of the Harrisburg–Carlisle metropolitan statistical area.