A fully automated marshalling yard
 

The Swedish program Nova on SVT showed how things worked at Borlänge marshalling yard, a fully automated yard. One man can drive the engine and just drop the cars to the right track.

http://www.akerstroms.com/bilder/Film/Nova.html

There are two more big marshalling yards i Sweden, Säve (Gothenburg) and Hallsberg, but there it takes three persons to operate the trains. But all three have coils to brake the cars.

(Hope this was the right place to post it)

all i can say is.. wow, very very impressed with that.

Thanks for posting, Bobjork.
It's good to see that wagonload freight is still alive in Sweden.

Very impressive Bobjork. Now thats what I call a large model railway. Problem is it won't fit in my back yard.

Great post Bobjork!

Sad that we did not develop our hump marshalling yards in this way!

Merry Christmas,

John H-T.

Brilliant hope we don't take it up though,i can imagine the chaos!!

We had a system of Hump marshalling yards opened in 1963.
These are some of them;
Healey Mills,
Toton,
York Dringhouses,
Tyne Yard
Tees Yard
Carlisle.
These were all given the chop in the mid 1980's.
Shunting was still carried out at these yards, but in very much reduced form.
HM yard closed for traffic around 2 years ago, now its just rusty track, with nature doing its bit and memories of those who worked there.

What about Tinsley - I can remember the fanfare when it was opened and still have the 'Modern Railways' magazines describing its innovation. I thought it was still going till recently - that's how long I have been living elsewhere!

Hump yards are still a big thing over here in North America, I can sometimes hear the squeal of the wheels going over the hump just a half mile from my house. If I remember right the Tinsley yard had booster-retarders, not sure how the boost worked! Over here they are just retarders with the result that occasionally a car does not make into the receiving track and the hump locomotive has to jump in and tidy up.

Out of curiosity, I did a search on booster-retarders and found this interesting reference, it is about Welsh Mining and an interesting read (search document for 'booster-retarder'). It mentions Dowty, the manufacturer, I visited their manufacturing plants in the '80s. Their main market for these was in South Africa, they had a manufacturing plant near Johannesburg.

http://www.davel.f2s.com/hendrecoed/...sletter/54.pdf

Nice post there!!