Glossary
Rail Yard Engineer Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential rail yard engineer terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key rail yard engineer vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in rail yard engineer training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Air test
- Brake test.
- Blue flag
- Protects workers on track.
- Car count
- Number of cars.
- Coupling
- Joining cars.
- Cut of cars
- Group of cars.
- FRA
- Federal Railroad Administration.
- Hostler
- Moves engines to service.
- Hump yard
- Yard using gravity.
- Job briefing
- Daily safety meeting.
- Main line
- Primary track.
- Remote control locomotive
- Operated by belt pack.
- Shove
- Pushing cars.
- Switching
- Sorting cars.
- Three-step protection
- Stop, set brakes, center reverser.
- Yard
- Rail switching area.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Rail Yard Engineer practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Rail Yard Engineer training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.