THE HUMP YARD

When the United States entered the World War in April 1917, the New Haven was planning to quadruple the size of the fairly new yard it had on Smithfield Avenue and operate it through gravity, that is it would be a hump yard in which trains would be pushed up an incline and individual cars would roll down from the summit into a matrix of switches which would direct the cars to specific tracks assigned to different destinations. The switches would be controlled by men in towers and the cars would be controlled by a man operating the hand brake.on the car Eventually cars would be controlled by retarders, eliminating the riders.

Hump yards had been constructed in the nineteenth century but were not in widespread use. Although they were very efficient they were economical only when there were many cars to classify and many car destinations that required a sophisticated sorting arrangement. It was said that sorting at least 800 cars a day was necessary to warrant a hump yard. Providence was chosen as a place for a modern hump yard because several primary and secondary routes and branches radiated from the area. In addition to cars from or for local industries, team yards and freight houses, there was heavy freight traffic moving through Providence from and to a number of significant nearby cities such as Boston, Worcester, New Bedford, Fall River, Lowell, Taunton, etc. Also,cars arriving from and routed for other centers such as New Haven or Hartford, or New York and its southern connections or the western gateway at Maybrook had to be switched and grouped.

The Hump after the installation of car retaders, electro-pneumatic devices controlled from the towers which gripped the car wheels passing through them in oder to reduce the speed of a car to a level appropriate to its weight and distance to be travelled. To the left of the first retarder is the old "winter hump" which was three feet higher than the twelve foot high "summer hump" to compensate for the slower rolling qualities of cars in cold weather. The view of the classification tracks is to the south and the Smithfield Avenue viaduct. Tower "A" is on the right and Tower "B" can barely be seen next to the left floodlight tower.

CONSTRUCTION. Near the end of 1917, the New Haven purchased from the City of Providence a key piece of land of 600,000 square feet on Smithfield Avenue to add to large sections of land it was acquiring from private owners. The railroad also received permission to close certain streets and bridges, reroute other streets and build new bridges to open the space needed for the new yard. The changes were mainly in Providence, for although about half the yard would be in Pawtucket, the northern section was built mainly on vacant land. Construction was underway in 1918 to cut away the hillls 20 or 30 feet high near Silver Spring and use the material to raise the low ground on the west side where the Moshassuck River flowed. The nation's railroads found it difficult to move the tonnage generated by the war and the Federal Government took control of the railroads in 1918. When the financial future became uncertain,at the end of the war, construction of the yard was suspended in December 1918 with only about 30 percent completed. By the end of August 1919, the United States Railroad Administration , which continued to control the railroads until 1920, decided that the economies to be realized by the yard merited the expense and construction resumed with the Famiglietti Brothers as contractors.

The roads in BLUE were removed for the yard while roads in RED were added. YELLOW roads remained. The space within the U shaped group of new roads was used for the fan of classification tracks which left the hump built to the right of where Cemetery Street (BLUE) crossed the mainline on the right side of the 1915 map. The receiving yard was built in Pawtucket which is to the right of Cemetery Street. The RED road crossing the tracks is the new Smithfield Avenue viaduct. Old Smithfield Avenue is the BLUE road crossing the mainline. New Smithfield Avenue and a continuation of Silver Spring Street run along the yard on the east and west side, respectively. The new hump yard incorporated most of the old tracks on this map. The old yard and mainline had to be used until all the tracks were reconfigured during the multi-year construction project.

United Electric Railway Car No. 2008 on the Branch Avenue Bridge in July 1939. The viaduct crossed the south end of the Northup Avenue Classification Yard.

A year later about 75 percent of the yard was finished but funding construction was difficult in the inflationary environment after the war and there were temporary layoffs of construction crews and work suspensions. Although construction was expected to be finished in 1920, it was well into 1922 before the yard could be considered finished. Even then the New Haven was still buying land to fine tune the yard. Construction progressed in stages since the yard was essentially built over an existing mainline and functioning yard. Much of the track layout was incorporated into the new yard but with entirely new functions. The original mainline cut diagonally through the finished yard but the track became part of the eastbound classification and departure tracks. The new mainline tracks were built on both sides of the yard and had to be temporarily located while land was being graded through the hills and wetlands on the edges of the yard. The west side of the yard was finished first and the east side last. At the end of 1921 it was reported that, although the yard was not completed, three shifts of trainmen were already at work making-up trains. The finished yard would be about 800 feet wide and two miles in length. It was soon classifying about 1,000 cars a day. In 1928, 340,569 cars were classified and in 1929 about 1,300 were being classified each day. The Great Depression soon cut into that number.

The photo is undated but appears to be late 1940's. The view is to the south from near the Smithfield Avenue viaduct and shows the eastbound classification yard. In the distance is the Branch Street bridge and the two-story wood yard office.

RIDERS vs. RETARDERS. When the hump yard was being designed, retarders to control the speed of cars rolling off the hump had not been tried in this country. Retarders were invented by officers of the Indiana Harbor Belt and installed in 1923-4 at the road's Gibson Yard in Indiana near Chicago. The Union Switch & Signal Company developed the invention and made the first commercial installation in 1925 at the Illinois Central's Markham yard near Chicago. Car riders were the method originally used for controlling the speed of cars coming off the hump. Track numbers were tacked on each car in the receiving yard at the Pawtucket side of the yard showing where it was to be switched. At the crest of the Northup Avenue hump there was a building which housed a man who read the track number from the side of the car and called the number to a tower about a hundred feet down the track which threw electro- pneumatically controlled track switches to get the car to the correct track . As the car neared the crest, one of the riders sheltered in the building climbed to the brake wheel on the end of the car. Brake wheels on box cars were positioned near the roof so as to allow the rider to see where the car was as it rolled. down one of the roughly three dozen tracks in the classification yard The rider was expected to slow the car to a gentle coupling with cars already on its assigned track. After the ride the rider walked to two tracks on which a speeder car travelled back to the crest with men who had completed their ride.

In 1926, the New Haven reported, "A crew of 15 car riders on the 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. shift at our Cedar Hill Terminal, March 20th, put 1130 cars over the Hump, there being 802 cuts in the 1130 cars. This is an average of 53.5 rides per man; and deducting the 20 minutes ' lunch period, equals a ride every 8 minutes, 36 seconds during the 8 hour period."

The man in the tower controls the track switches to route cars to the desired classification track. A diagram of the tracks leading off the Northup Avenue hump is above the towerman's head. The picture is from 1922 before retarders were installed and brick towers replaced the original wooden tower..

The rider system was a big improvement over pull and push switching but had certain dangers and disadvantages. The brake wheel which tightened the brake shoes on the car was connected to various levers through a chain and although riders were instructed to test brakes before descending, there was difficulty knowing whether the brake was working until the rider tried to stop. Corrosion or fractured metal could easily disable the brakes. Even when the brakes were working it could be difficult to restrain a heavily loaded car or one in rain or coated with ice, particularly if the track was filled and a short stopping distance was required. Because brakes on only one car could be operated cars were sent down the hump individually or in very small cuts providing the cuts were not too heavy. Considerable judgement was required not to slow the car too soon or too late. Then there was also the problem of slipping on the car or being hit while returning to the speeder car track for a pick-up.

Until retarders were installed in 1929, track speeders on two dedicated tracks returned car riders to the hump. The speeder track tunneled under the hump. Above the tunnel, cars and a rider are seen beginning the descent into the Northup Avenue classification yard.

The two speeder cars were photographed at the NYNH&H hump yard at Cedar Hill but are the same as those used at Northup Avenue.

From an efficiency standpoint there was a need for a fairly large number of riders, a cost that became considerable as wages rose with post war inflation. Back and forth movements were not entirely eliminated since there was a need to redirect cars that were misdirected and there was still a need to pull cars to place them in the departure yard tracks. Damages from rough switching may have been reduced by the gravity yard but inexperienced riders or faulty brakes could be a problem. In 1929 the riders at Northup Avenue yard were replaced by retarders which were controlled by towermen who gauged the speed of the descending cars and used an electro-pneumatic system to apply pressure to the car wheels by long movable clamps on each side of the rails. Work to install retarders was started in April 1929 and finished in about five months. The official opening was August 15, 1929. All retarders and track switches were operated by electricity. New control towers were installed and a teletype system provided the hump operators with information about the cars.in the receiving yard. Capacity was also increased by revising the locations of some track switches at the hump end of the yard.

Y-3 Class 0-8-0 Switcher No. 3431 is along Silver Spring Street facing south and Branch Avenue. The New Haven purchased 25 of the 0-8-0 type switchers from Schenectady in 1922 and 1923 for heavy switching. The 0-6-0 type switchers were not capable of pushing long trains over the hump. Notice that the engine has silvered cylinder covers, an adornment that was not uncommon. .No. 3431 was originally assigned a Central New England number for work at Maybrook, N.Y.

Photo by Otto C. Perry

Y-4-a Class 0-8-0 Switcher No. 3611 was one of 16 three-cylinder 0-8-0 type engines built for the New Haven by Schenectady in 1924 and 1927. The three-cylinders provided a smoother torque than ordinary two-cylinder engines and were well suited to pushing long trains over the hump at slow speeds. The locomotive is running backwards along the eastbound mainline opposite the hump at Northup Avenue in October 1950. Photo by Stephen Payne

New Haven R-1-b class 4-8-2 No. 3332 was built by Schenectady in 1920 and was among the more common steam freight locomotives used on symbol freights out of the Northup Avenue Yard.

June 1937 photo by Lewis Walter

Three ALCO RS-11's lead an eastbound train at the north end of the Northup Avenue yard in the Woodlawn section of Pawtucket. It is the mid-1950's and the yard is in decline but still has a relatively healthy appearance. Photo by Edward J. Ozog