One of the Busiest: Norfolk Southern's DeButts Yard in Action

This video features footage I shot over two days at the NS DeButts Yard in Chattanooga, TN.
You'll see plenty of cars go over the hump and more yard activity.
Everything is sped up 4X to better show how the yard and crews operate.
There is a companion video with the real-time footage:

Let me know what you think and if you like it, a thumbs up would be appreciated.

[pm]

I bet many didn’t notice, but that railroader at 9:25 on the ground is operating the locomotive with a remote control transmitter attached to his chest. One of the more interesting things about the railroad I’ve enjoyed since joining.

[locoman.]

The amount of freight moved by rail is just staggering.love video's about rail yards, soooo many locomotives in one place.thanks for posting another excellent video.

[GDream]

Humpty Dumpy sat in the tower,
Working his radio and feeling the power,
When all the NS horses and all the NS cars came rolling down the tracks,
Humpty Dumpty opened some switches and built some trains that CSX lacks.

Nice work @NKY Railfan!

[Vaitamanu]

I watched on old documentary movie about a French yard operating with a hump like this one, before complete computerization. Iron marbles, in the same number than the cars passing the hump, were going down a series of electrical contactors, following a pre-arranged pattern, closing some of them such commanding the switches on the railway, so the cars were sorted in accordance. Fascinating...

[AGSGuy]

So happy to see Chattanooga being posted since I'm close to it. Thank you for uploading!

[albertvieira]

❤ I would love to see more humping yards it's very very interesting and I enjoy watching it keep up the good work double thumbs up😊😊

[fgtwway]

wow what a big yard that was wonderful to see you can't see this action on the ground now these days

[kamala]

Excellent video enjoy all your vids. Love the hump yard ones so interesting.

[lnrailroad]

I've been subscribed since the beginning. You have one of the best channels on YouTube!!

[jordonfreeman]

I’m listening to the radio chatter and I hear some Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum chatter coming from the crews of Tennessee, Alabama & Georgia (TAG) GP38 #80 and Southern 2-8-0 #630.

[mikrwave]

Yay! congrats on 20, 000 subs! Keep up the great work.

[pixamite]

Cool to see this. I spent my first 3 1/2 years in the yard there before finally getting out on the mainline where I always wanted to be.

[AdamPierce-nwhj]

Hi there I'm new here and I love trains I listen to the radio scanner a lot I love all kinds of locomotive but my most favorite engine is BNSF I'm a huge fan of trains

[johnhargis]

I'm an NS retiree I can say DeButts is the busiest yard I was ever in 😊 I the Sou Ra days the loco facility @ DeButts could do any repair to a EMD loco mechanical, electrical, paint & sheet metal 😮

[januschreichel]

Excellent Video, thumbs up 👌👍
Greetings from Germany🌝🙋‍♂

[thetriplem]

Having lived outside of Attalla (Gadsden) Alabama for about 2 years, I was very familiar with the NS line Northeast from Norris yard towards Chattanooga, but hadn't realized DeButts was at the other end, & the larger yard. The sleepy single track line from Norris yard to Chattanooga was very quiet most of the time, so I never thought NS had such an even larger yard at the other end.

[keiganthetennessean]

I live an hour and a half from Chattanooga. The last time we were there was for the Thomas & Friends experience. My 9 year old is a huge train fan.

[brianligat]

Some of the speeds and forming "collisions" seem way too fast. Surprised there aren't derailments within the yard. Fascinating to see things in action.

[swainscheps]

I noticed the tanks at the start of the video were single humped even though they were all ending up in the same strong. Then a few minutes later multiple cars would get cut and go over the hump together. Assume that’s some kind of a safety issue(?) - or maybe they were full while the other multi-car cuts were empty(?)

[Motherslug-ql]

Humping can get old only if you want it to as there is a lot going on when uncoupling cars, most railfans don't understand that the Hump Master is also inspecting each car he comes across that rolls over the Hump making sure things look a certain way, if he see's something out of place or broken that car will be Flagged and sent to car shop. The worse part I had on the Hump is when you get a car and the Coupler doesn't want to uncouple as it happens quite a lot, forcing a coupler to open is interesting fight as the Hump Power will try to kick the car off the train with the use of Power all while trying to pull the Cut-Lever to separate the cars. Back in the day I found Hobo's in boxcars that you have to stop train and call Police immediately for trespassing, and Wintertime isn't fun at all.

Common Question I get asked all the time is why you shouldn't Hump the cars that say, "Do Not Hump" on them, first off almost every American railroad still Humps these cars regardless of the saying "Do Not Hump" it's a known fact by rail crews. "Do Not Hump" railcars have that saying is because of weight and pressure as some cars can be off weight and make the Brake Retarders think the car is this heavy when it's actually lighter in weight than it really is causing the car to either coast faster or slower into the yard bowel, Scale Test Cars use Air Pressure to crate artificial Mass to the wheels making a single Rail car feel like your pulling 20 railcars, so if the pressure is on then goes through a set of Brake Retarder's a whole lot of Hell is going to happen.

Departure Switching is known as "Trim-Job" and the Conrail Yards I worked in crews needed to know distance of Cut-Track because when you pull a string of cars out of the Receiving yard to place them into the Departure Yard you have to know how long of a distance your string of railcars is, so you don't over run your distance on the Cut-Track which could lead to a massive problems given train cars aren't airline connected until there in the Departure Yard for other reasons, head-on collisions as well as derailment's can happen when pulling a string cut of cars without airbrakes doesn't stop as fast as you think even when you're doing 10-to-15mph ect. Counting Cars from a certain point is a thing when working the Trim-Job.