THE FLAT SWITCHING YARD

At the start of the twentieth century Providence had recently completed team yards in the center of the city which provided excellent facilities for the loading and unloading of freight. However, the facilities for switching freight cars out of trains, classifying cars according to destination, and for making up trains were outdated. Moreover freight traffic was growing and the consolidation of several independent railroads into the New Haven required new operating pattterns.

In 1904 the New Haven purchased land around Northup Avenue to substantially expand the yard on the east side of the mainline that had been built in the 1880's. To ease the design of the yard the city abandoned the part of Northup Avenue east of Silver Spring Street that had passed under the mainline. The New Haven then removed the bridge and filled in the underpass. Some buildings had to be removed from the area of the yard and the land leveled. The work was completed in 1907. The yard took the name Northup Avenue from the street that was buried under it.

K-1-b 2-6-0 405 is leaving her train. The flat switching yard had a relatively simple ladder arrangement of tracks on both sides of the mainline. View north from near Branch Avenue c.1914.

The Northup Avenue Yard Office and Signal Tower in 1907.

John Fahey at the far left is General Yardmaster. The Yardmaster and Chief Yard Clerk are at the right in the same row. Others are Clerks.

At the time the New Haven was building the flat switching yard it was also building a tunnel nearly a mile long under College Hill in Providence. The tunnel provided a direct route from Providence to the east side of Narragansett Bay and was considered a way of removing some Boston traffic passing through Pawtucket and Central Falls which were considered bottlenecks because of grade crossings and the narrowing of the line to two tracks through the congested urban area. The Northup Avenue yard may have had less importance after the tunnel was constructed if the line through Pawtucket and Central Falls was not relocated in 1914-15.

The enlarged yard as it was in 1915. The yard that existed in the early 1880's can still be seen east of the mainline on the left edge of the map. It was only about a quarter of the size of the expanded yard. When the yard was again enlarged in the 1920's, Smithfield Avenue was relocated to the east and the place where it bridged the yard was moved north. The yard tracks at the left bottom became known as Yard 16.

The enlarged yard was an improvement but it had some disadvantages. The main lines went through its center and although the yards on either side were reserved for classyfing either northbound or southbound traffic, some trains and switching moves had to cross the mainlines increasing the risk of collisions despite the protection of the electric signal system. The collision between the Boat Train and the switching engine in 1890 showed that electric block signals and flagmen were not always enough.

Moreover, a flat switching yard required slow, inefficient back and forth movements to move cars to the proper track. The movements and hard couplings often damaged cars and loads. Kicking cars into the sidings sped the work but loads and cars could be damaged as the cars came together with considerable momentum. Freight traffic through Providence was growing and thought was given to additional improvements. The start of a World War in Europe in the summer of 1914 and the entry of the U.S. three years later put enormous pressure on the railroads.

About this time the New Haven had begun the project to relocate the line through Pawtucket and Central Falls, remove all grade crossings and continue the four tracks thru to Boston Switch where the line divided for Boston and Worcester. Some of the material excavated to depress the line was used a little north of the Providence border to fill in the low area for a possible new engine terminal. Also in the same area a considerable number of sidings were constructed. The Pawtucket-Central Falls station was opened January 16, 1916 and soon the New Haven was buying more land near Smithfield Avenue to construct a major yard which would extend to where the line relocation had begun in Woodlawn, Pawtucket.

The enlarged yard in 1907 viewed from the original location of the Smithfield Avenue overpass. The view is to the south and the center of Providence. The old location of Smithfield Avenue is on the left. This section of the yard was said to have a capacity of 600 cars. This photograph was published in the 1907 report of the Rhode Island Railroad Commissioner and is interesting because it shows the vacant land on the right that would become part of the future hump yard. Although it appears that construction may already have started, construction of hump yard track on the right is not known to have begun for at least a decade.

A new I-2 4-6-2 is racing to Boston with an eight car express. The New Haven Pacific type locomotive was photographed from the old location of the Smithfield Avenue overpass. The switch on the left is the lead to the old yard (Yard 16). There are four mainline tracks. On the bottom right are switch control levers for the yard entrance. Reach rods can be seen between the southbound and northbound mains. There was a Northup Avenue signal station at least as early as 1905. The new yard did not have switching leads; the outer mainline track served the purpose.

K-1-b 2-6-0 405 with a westbound near Branch Avenue c.1914. At this time the K-1 Moguls were the largest freight locomotives at the Northup Avenue yard.

New Haven 0-6-0 No. 441 was built by Schenectady in 1900. It was one of a large number of similar six-wheel switchers that the New Haven began buying before World War I for heavy duty yard work. The locomotive has compound cylinders; the high pressure cylinder on the left side of the engine exhausts its steam into the low presure cylinder on the right side. After the 1902 order for 0-6-0 switchers the New Haven turned to simple engines. The compounds were powerful but the low pressure used in the second cylinder tended to make them sluggish and therefore they did not have the snappy action useful in a switcher. The T-1 class engine was later renumbered No. 2310 and classified T-2-a when rebuilt as a conventional simple engine.

New Haven No. 2425 is at work on July 7, 1917. The T-2-b class locomotive is one of 136 T-2 class engines purchased from 1900 to 1913. It was built by the Rhode Island Locomotive Works in Providence in 1907. The oil headlight and tender trucks date the photo.

New Haven T-2-b 2461 was photographed on August 2, 1915. The engine was built by Richmond in 1913. The 0-6-0 switchers in the T-2 class were powerful and easily handled the short switching blocks and relatively small wooden cars that predominated before World War I.

J-1 2-8-2 3006 was delivered by Schenectady in 1916 and was the largest type of freight locomotive used to power freight trains out of Northup Avenue Yard before work began to convert the flat switching yard into a hump yard. The 4-8-2 locomotives that became the primary New Haven steam freight power began arriving in 1919.