A borough of a third of a square mile
The yard is a neighbour rather than a resident
The North American Rail Network maintained by the Federal Railroad Administration and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics lists a rail yard near this borough operated by the Ohio Central Railroad Company.
The borough covers well under half a square mile. None of that makes the yard less real; it means the yard is a neighbour rather than a resident.
More yards inside four miles
That yard is not on its own. Three more at McKees Rocks sit 1.8 to 2.1 miles off, two more at Bellevue and Avalon 2.3 miles out, and an intermodal ramp 2.0 miles away.
Further out but still close, Island Avenue is 3.2 miles off and the Rook yard the same distance at Green Tree. A liquid bulk terminal sits 1.0 mile away and a river port 2.5 miles.
Not everything nearby is rail
Not all of it is rail. Two military installations sit 6.8 miles west at the airport.
The Etna yard is 7.4 miles off on the other side of the rivers. That is a short distance on a map and a longer one in practice, because getting there means bridges, and in this state the authority that posts a bridge is often the township rather than the county.
So a truck working out of this borough is doing short, awkward, bridge-bound running rather than open miles. It wears differently from a truck that spends its life on a highway.
Dumps, flatbeds and day cabs off the ramps, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies and pickups.
Drayage between a ramp and a gate is stop-start work. Between the ramp 2.0 miles off and Island Avenue 3.2 miles away the miles are short and the clutch, brakes and driveline take the weight of it, so a low odometer on a truck from here does not mean an easy life.
A truck spec’d for one ramp does not always suit the next, and between Island Avenue 3.2 miles off and the Etna yard 7.4 miles away there are enough of them for that to happen regularly.
The other half is space. On a borough of this size there is nowhere to keep a truck that has stopped earning, and that decides it faster than the mechanical condition does.