Selkirk Yard


Selkirk Yard is a large freight railroad yard located in Selkirk, New York, about south of Albany. The yard is owned by CSX Transportation and is its major classification yard for the northeast United States and the gateway to points east of the Hudson River, including New York City. It is situated just west of the Alfred H. Smith Memorial Bridge on the railroad's Castleton Subdivision and is the eastern end of the Selkirk Subdivision.

History

Selkirk Yard was built in 1924 by the New York Central Railroad on a site. Initially it had two hump classification yards with a capacity of 11,000 cars, and typically handled 8,000 cars per day.

1968 rebuild

The facility was rebuilt in 1968 as Alfred E. Perlman Yard on an expanded site of. It features a 70-track classification hump yard, several support yards and servicing facilities. The yard can process over 3,200 cars per day using computerized controls that originally employed a GE PAC 4020.

Recent improvements

Recent improvements include an automobile transload facility and procurement of a genset switching locomotive to improve air quality by reducing emissions from yard operations.
Starting In 2017, Selkirk now features a two-track mainline that runs east to west on the south side of the yard, allowing many run-through trains to easily swap crews at a much higher rate of speed than ever before. In the past, it was necessary to run these trains through the body of the yard.