the.com/railyard
Where trains go to be sorted, shamed, and occasionally forgotten.
means A network of tracks where train cars are sorted, coupled, uncoupled, and stored.
from A plain compound of 'rail' (the iron or steel bar that guides a train, itself from Old French 'raille', traced back to Latin 'regula', a straight rod or rule) and 'yard' (Old English 'geard', an enclosed ground or area, a cousin of 'garden'). Put together in the age of expanding railroads, the word is as functional as the place it names — no myth required, just tracks fenced into a working ground.
- actual purpose
- sorting cars into new trains, not storage
- classification yard
- uses gravity hump to sort cars automatically
- hazard history
- among most dangerous pre-OSHA industrial workplaces
- urban fate
- often rezoned into parks once rail traffic dies