RPRC Seaver Yard Facelift

A few months back, Richmond Pacific’ s Seaver Yard underwent an improvement project. Seaver is located between Harbour Way and Marina Way in Richmond. The satellite view below shows the yard as it was before the project with six tracks (406 at the top and 401 at the bottom) Tracks 401-403 were double ended tracks. (Note: Google may update their satellite photos at some point in the future to show as it exists today after the upgrade.)

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Seaver’s Use

Seaver holds cars bound for industries located on the western side of the RPRC system around the port such as Sim’s scrap, the Cemex plant and the aggregate complex on Wright Ave. Seaver also provides a location to store cars to help keep the main yard at 23rd Street open and fluid.

Switch crews use Seaver to sort cars and collect empties as part of working the local industries, particularly in the evening.

Location Matters

If a switch crew needs to collect cars that are any distance from where they will be finally spotted, the travel time to get those cars can become important. Most of the RPRC’s track is 10mph or less with a lot at only 5mph. Each mile takes 6 minutes at 10mph and 12 minutes at 5mph.

Let’s say a crew switching the 8th street bypass near the port just west of Seaver Yard needs to collect cars from Safeway Yard which is about two miles away. The round trip travel alone could easily take 48 minutes: 2 miles @ 12 minutes per mile x 2 = 48 minutes. Add to that, the time spent switching at Safeway, as well as possible delays due to other RPRC or BNSF trains. All up, the time to collect those cars from Safeway Yard could end up being close to two hours! So it makes sense on low speed switching lines to have small yards located close to industries that need frequent switching to minimize time spent shuttling across the shortline to collect cars.

The Upgrade

In the recent work, the RPRC relaid part of the yard to increase capacity slightly and to better align the yard’s layout with it’s function. The old Seaver yard had a couple of through tracks on the south side and a couple of stub ended tracks on the north side. The stub ended tracks were often used to hold covered hoppers that are unloaded directly into trucks - a universal industry of sorts. These cars were previously unloaded in Parr Yard , a few hundred yards toward the port, but that yard was slimmed from three tracks to two earlier this year when the aggregate plant was built.

In the past, track 403 was used as a thoroughfare track. The choice of one of the longer tracks for thoroughfare rather than the shortest through track seemed unusual to me but was probably related to the state of switches and track on that part of the yard. Here’s a view from a couple of years ago after we had some rain. The thoroughfare track can be clearly seen.

Seaver Yard in flood

The New Yard Layout

RPRC’s new track layout for Seaver Yard

There is only one through track now on the south side of Seaver. It is newly laid with cost effective jointed rail seen in the picture below from the east end. A block wall was subsequently built to enclose the left side of this view.

Seaver through track, east end

There is a spur midway on the through track that is not presently used. Note the slightly shorter stub-ended track (402) due to the curve on the thoroughfare track at the east end.

The west end throat is much the same as it was before the upgrade though has been regraded, and the yard throat has been lifted six inches to avoid the type of flooding seen in the photo at the head of this post. Here’s how the west end looks now.

Seaver Yard west throat

The raised track on the throat can clearly be seen as track 402 (second from the right) drops down in from the switch.

Like most things Richmond Pacific, it’s a neat and tidy result, purpose built for the job at hand.

- Coxy