Mumford, TX: UP Brazos Yard

(Since it is new, it has yet to show up in a satellite image)

My 1928 RR Atlas labels the railroad along TX-6 as Southern Pacific. The rest of the routes are labeled I.G.N. But I don't know what that stand for.

"Union Pacific Railroad began construction this month [Jan 2018] on its Brazos Yard in Robertson County, Texas. The $550 million rail yard represents the largest capital investment in a single facility in the company's 155-year history. Brazos Yard will have the capacity to switch up to 1,300 rail cars per day, making it one of the highest capacity yards on Union Pacific's 23-state network. As the first yard of its kind to be built in more than a generation, it will showcase best practices in operating efficiency, technology and innovation....Brazos Yard will function as a classification yard where rail cars are separated and sorted by destination before being assembled into new trains headed across the country. The site sits at the convergence of seven Union Pacific rail lines, making it a strategic point for freight rail traffic travelling north, south, east, and west." [UPcapital]

I found a UP map to confirm that several UP routes radiate from this area between Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston.

UP System, cropped

I get the impression that this is to be a hump yard. But UP recently announced that they are switching to Precision Scheduled Railroading. That concept was invented by Hunter Harrison and one of his tenants is that hump yards should be replaced by flat switching. A June article removes all doubt: "Sometimes also referred to as hump yards, this is where rail cars are separated and sorted by destination before being assembled into new trains. This particular classification yard, Union Pacific’s 15th, has been a twinkle in the railroad’s eye since the late 1990s." [UPconstruction]

Damon Uebel commented on his posting

The map shows two routes connecting where they cross US-79+US-190. But that is going to require a lot of construction because those two routes currently don't connect. A road overpass is probably going to have to be built to connect them.

Satellite

Steven Bybee, Union Pacific superintendent of transportation services, says most of Union Pacific’s growth has taken place in its Southern Region, especially when it comes to manifest volume....Once a general region was determined for the new rail yard, Zucker and his team began looking at potential sites near Hearne and Valley Junction, Texas. “Rail yards need to be extremely flat, that’s the biggest engineering challenge,” he said. “The second biggest challenge is getting storm water to drain from an incredibly flat area. We had to find an area that could overcome both obstacles.” Using site reviews, aerial photographs and flood plain studies of the Brazos River, the engineers built a matrix to score seven potential sites. The location the yard is being built – south of U.S. highway 79, between the Brazos River and Texas highway FM 50, and about halfway between Dallas and Houston – scored the highest. [UPconstruction]

I remember when UP and SP merged, traffic in Texas ground to a halt. And that congestion spread throughout the rest of the UP system. This yard is expected to handle the growth in Texas from 2.2 billion tons to more than 4 billion tons by 2045.

(new window) You can mute it with no loss of information.



I wonder if this project is another victim of PSR (Precision Scheduled Railroading) and an over emphasis on operating ratio. Basically, PSR means that shareholders (e.g. hedge fund operators) are your only priority. Employees, customers and safety are to be sacrificed to reduce the operating ratio. I've noticed that there seems to be more derailments after a railroad lays off a lot of its workers.
https://www.kbtx.com/content/news/Union-Pacific-scales-back-work-on-new-train-yard-in-Mumford-507750731.html

UP halts work on Brazos hump yard, idles two others

Railroad will shift funding from massive Texas facility to new Sunset Route sidings, block-swapping yard

[Trains]

Operating changes at Union Pacific will include shutting down the humps at two yards, and moving funding for the Brazos Yard to Sunset Route improvements.

Union Pacific

WSJ's report  This article explicitly states the $550m project is being stopped because of PSR. Unfortunately, it is payware so I can't read the rest of it.