goods yard

plural goods yards

1. An area associated with a railway station where freight is loaded and unloaded.

   After marching into a goods yard beyond the station and halting beside a train, the manacled prisoners were pushed into cattle-trucks […]

   1933, James Hilton, Knight Without Armour, London: Ernest Benn, Part 2

   3 more examples

   Kim led to the fort-like railway station, black in the end of night; the electrics sizzling over the goods-yard where they handle the heavy Northern traffic.

   1901, Rudyard Kipling, chapter 2, in Kim, New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., page 41

   Here the line is joined by the Colne Valley branch, and both tracks are carried into Haverhill station upon a high embankment from which the town can be seen on the south side. The twin tracks, after traversing a scissors crossover, become the down and up roads through the station, which possesses an extensive goods yard.

   1951 September, B. D. J. Walsh, “The Sudbury and Haverhill Line, Eastern Region”, in Railway Magazine, page 619

   At the western perimeter the old railway station with its busy goods yards has become a bleak coach terminal: no bustle, no people, just an empty space and a timetable.

   1978, Eva Figes, chapter 12, in Little Eden: A Child at War, New York: Persea Books, page 124

   Synonyms: freight yard