CPR Alyth Yard is a 168 acre (0.67987248 km²) Class 1 railway facility located in the neighbourhood of Alyth, southeast of downtown Calgary

Calgary

Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

, Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

. One of Canadian Pacific Railway

Canadian Pacific Railway

The Canadian Pacific Railway , formerly also known as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railway founded in 1881 and now operated by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001...

's main marshalling yards

Classification yard

A classification yard or marshalling yard is a railroad yard found at some freight train stations, used to separate railroad cars on to one of several tracks. First the cars are taken to a track, sometimes called a lead or a drill...

 in Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, it primarily serves as a hump classification yard and in addition has rail car repair shops and diesel locomotive servicing facilities on site.

The yard is CPR's busiest in Western Canada

Western Canada

Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces and commonly as the West, is a region of Canada that includes the four provinces west of the province of Ontario.- Provinces :...

 and is home terminal to crews operating north to Red Deer, Alberta

Red Deer, Alberta

Red Deer is a city in Central Alberta, Canada. It is located near the midpoint of the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor and is surrounded by Red Deer County. It is Alberta's third-most-populous city – after Calgary and Edmonton. The city is located in aspen parkland, a region of rolling hills...

, and west to Field, British Columbia

Field, British Columbia

Field is an unincorporated settlement of approximately 300 people located in the Kicking Horse River valley of southeastern British Columbia,Canada, within the confines of Yoho National Park....

, through the Spiral Tunnels.

At the centre of Alyth is a 48-track hump classification yard. This is an automatic hump using the Pro Yard II operating system for the hump computer. Cars humped are weighed and then allowed to run down into one of the many classification tracks, slowed by automatic retarder

Retarder (railroad)

In rail transport, a retarder is a device installed in a classification yard used to reduce the speed of freight cars as they are sorted into trains. Each retarder consists of a series of stationary brakes surrounding a short section of each rail on the track that grip and slow the cars' wheels...

s controlled by the hump computer.

Alyth Yard is designed to handle approximately 2200 rail cars at 100% capacity, and is supported by satellite yards in Ogden Park, the Industrial Yard Office (IYO) and the Calgary Intermodal Facility at Sheppard.