Meaning & use
railyard
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Meanings
nouncountable
An area with many tracks where trains are kept, sorted, loaded, or repaired between journeys.
Grammar: Countable: use a/an or the with it, and it has a regular plural in -s.
Patterns
- a railyard worker
- in the railyard
- a busy railyard
The freight cars sat in the railyard for two days before the strike ended.
My uncle worked nights in a railyard outside Chicago, moving wagons onto the right tracks.
From the bridge you can see the whole railyard, with dozens of lines shining in the rain.
nouncountabletechnical
The part of a station or depot where locomotives and carriages are parked and serviced.
Grammar: Also countable; often used with the name of a city or company before it.
Patterns
- the locomotive railyard
- a maintenance railyard
Engineers at the maintenance railyard check every wheel and brake.
The old steam engines are now kept in a railyard that has become a small museum.
Word forms
| plural | railyards |
|---|
Common combinations
- freight railyard
- Trucks bring containers to the freight railyard every morning.
- work in a railyard
- She has worked in a railyard since she left school.
- a railyard full of wagons
- The railyard was full of wagons waiting to be unloaded.
- the edge of the railyard
- We walked along the edge of the railyard, counting the lights.
- railyard worker
- Railyard workers wear high-visibility jackets at all times.
Synonyms and how they differ
- depot
- A depot is a smaller place where vehicles or goods are kept; a railyard is specifically a set of railway tracks.
- marshalling yard
- British term for the same kind of place, especially one where trains are sorted onto different tracks.
- goods yard
- British and older; it usually means the part of a station where goods are loaded, not the whole site.
Word family
Commonly confused: railyard or railway? railyard or dockyard?
railyard vs railway
A railway is the track system or the company; a railyard is only the piece of land where trains are kept and sorted.
railyard vs dockyard
A dockyard is where ships are built or repaired, not trains.
Practice
Which sentence uses railyard correctly?
Choose one answer.
A railyard is a place with railway tracks where trains are kept and loaded, so loading containers onto trains fits. A ship is repaired in a dockyard, tickets are bought at a station, and cars are parked in a parking lot, so the other options describe the wrong kind of place.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “railyard”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.