Railroad Junction

a point at the intersection of several railroad lines, constituting a complex array of various engineering installations and devices.

The main installations of a railroad junction include sorting tracks, freight and passenger stations and other facilities for passengers, railroad lines linking the different stations, bypass lines, depots, service stations for maintaining and fitting out railroad cars, and facilities for train crews. Modern railroad junctions have railroad automation and remote control equipment, as well as electronic computers to automate basic technological processes. Railroad junctions are classified according to the work they perform and according to operating conditions as transit junctions, transit junctions with a high volume of transfer operations, and terminal junctions. In addition, there are industrial railroad junctions that serve large industrial enterprises or zones, and port railroad junctions near seaports or large river ports. Railroad junctions are built with one station or several technically interconnected stations. Stations can be planned in the form of an X or of a triangle or in parallel, sequential, radial, or ring fashion, or even a combination of these, as well as dead end. Five to ten lines intersect at major junctions. There were more than 500 railroad junctions in the USSR in 1970.