Types of rail terminal

Rail terminals can be categorized by the passenger and freight markets they serve with the function of shunting accounting for an intermediary form.

Passenger terminal

Passenger rail terminals tend to operate in their most basic form, with a quay for boarding or disembarking passengers and a common area for buying tickets, waiting and serving large quantities of passengers (e.g. retail store). Although some terminals are along a line that needs a halt of a few minutes so that passengers can embark or disembark, other terminals are at the head of an intercity corridor.

Rail terminals, like any other terminal facility, have a size and complexity that are directly related to the number of passengers they serve. There is a hierarchy of the importance of passenger rail terminals that is reflected in the layout of the rail network. It varies from simple stops with only one passenger platform for boarding or disembarking to central railway stations consisting of enclosed stations with facilities with multiple piers and amenities.

The intercity rail terminal, which also takes the shape of a central station, is the traditional passenger terminal and a recognizable urban landmark since many have been present for decades and helped to define urban centrality. Commuter rail covers metropolitan areas with stations that are planned and run in a simplified way because waiting time is limited. Public transportation networks are also serviced by rail, including the subway and light rail, and public structures are influenced by their network layout based on density levels.

Depending on their scale and the passenger traffic they manage, there is a whole hierarchy of railway stations, ranging from basic quays along a suburban line to broad central stations that are the hub for intercity, regional and urban transit rail systems. A far more recent form of rail terminal includes high-speed train stations that either involved the expansion of existing central stations to provide spurs linked to the high-speed rail network, or the construction of new dedicated terminals in suburban areas that could serve as new urban development poles.

The air transport development has created new rail opportunities, with the airport being a hub for intercity, commuter and rapid transportation. For some cases, the airport terminal complex contains a high-speed rail station.

Freight terminal

Freight terminal is also called goods station, goods yard or goods depot. This kind of station or terminal only embark and disembark freights without the passengers. Throughout the history, a freight train station has been serving as a stop where the transactions of goods being made. Traditionally, platform is situated next to the tracks and a depot consisting of offices and many other facilities inside for the use of freight customers. Most of the freight terminals are built at ground level to enable the movement of goods, freight trains and the people to access it.

Train freight yards had not to be centrally situated. This is because they needed a lot of room for the marshalling of multiple tracks. Railyards were also more likely to be built on fully greenfield sites than on rail terminals.

The interesting fact is that the rail yards continued to attract manufacturing activities that exploit the potential of rail delivery and thus become significant industrial zones. When dealing with bulk cargos, rail terminals should be located near the source because they are the key means of shipping such cargos to markets. These often vary in complexity due to the various freight markets these serve (e.g. food, gas, vehicles, containers) that require specialized loading/unloading equipment and facilities.

For the bulk, rail freight terminals tend to be commodity-specific with separate loading or unloading facilities (both operations are seldom performed at the same terminal). Roll-on / roll-off terminals are much easier because loading or unloading equipment requires a simple ramp, but a large amount of parking space is needed.

Break-bulk rail terminals include a wide range of activities where the frequency of loading and unloading occurs in small, private facilities serviced by rail spurs. It is the intermodal terminal with the setting up of facilities handling foreign and domestic containers which have seen the most growth. Location of rail freight terminals is typically based along with port terminals, (less common) fluvial terminals or inland locations that provide consumer or resource accessibility.

Rail freight terminals perform four major functions:

Shunting terminal

A shunting yard or terminal is a railway yard consisting of a set of tracks for sorting and parking railcars or locomotives, as well as for performing checks, maintenance and further processing operations. The shunting of passenger rail cars is important although less frequent and often takes place at maintenance yards or at yards near central stations. For freight, especially non-intermodal cars, shunting plays a role as a place to assemble, sort and break down train units based upon a variety of cargoes, origins and destinations.

Shunting terminal plays the role of assembling and sorting freight trains and breaking them. Given that trains can consist of up to about 100 railcars, mostly of different types, origins and destination, shunting can be a complex activity performed on multiple occasions. By contrast, unit trains carrying the same element, such as coal, vehicles or containers, need no shunting.

Reference:

Jean-Paul Rodrigue (2013), The Geography of Transport Systems. 3rd Edition New York: Routledge.

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