Indiana Harbor Built built Blue Island Yard in 1952, with 18 receiving tracks, nine to the north of the bowl and nine to the south. There are 44 tracks in the classification bowl, handling 1,800 cars a day. There are 19 auxiliary tracks to the north of the yard, but no dedicated departure tracks. In recent years, most of the traffic has been from or to Conrail (now Norfolk Southern).
The yard is located on the IHB main line, oriented roughly east-west, east of its crossing with the former IC at Harvey and west of its crossing of the former Rock Island at Blue Island.