I was wondering if the road bead on abonded/misused track almost gone. I’m going to model a Unused interchange and was wondering if the roadbed is lower than the main line track? I’ve seen people model it with almost no roadbed. Any advice?
I think it depends on how recently the abandonment occurred. Here locally about 20 miles of track was abandoned. The rail is gone,the ties are gone,but the trestles and ballast remains. I haven’t heard what the plan is. The railroad was the old Camas Prairie in central Idaho by the way.
Ok lets say the track was abonded ten years ago and the track is still there.
A few days ago I went by some abandoned tracks. They were in a neighborhood at that, and they had left the crossing signals up. I slowed down since I assumed I was going to cross some tracks and wanted to make sure I didn’t come by some unkept ones. I looked both ways before crossing, and to my surprise, that’s when I noticed that the tracks were all gone. The grade crossing was paved over, so there were no tracks on the road, and the line looked more like an alley than an old train track line. There was no ballast or anything, except the crossing signals, which looked pretty well kept. I didn’t have my camera on me at the moment so I guess I missed a good photo oportunity.
If the track is still there, the roadbed will be too. Most sidings will have less build up and roadbed then mainlines. Even sidings that get used a lot are overgrown with weeds.
Sorry about this. Maybe I wasn’t too clear. Let me re-explane. I will be modeling an inter change that is misused but is still operating. It was abonded 10 years ago satrting from 1995(so it was abonded in 1985) and the Railroad(Milwaukee Road) didn’t bother to take the track and ties. So I was wondering if the roadbed is sunken or is it the same as the main line roadbed. Thats cool that the grade crossings where still there, Some thing like that is in wausau. But it is the other way around. There was a road there and when they moved it they didn’t bother to take the crossbucks out. So theres two cross bucks sitting in the middle of a woods.
Most of the abanded track I’ve seen around here are no rails, no gravel, a few ties here and there stiking out of the grass a little, crossings are sometimes still there or patched over with blacktop. Useable bridges are usually turned into pedestrian walks if they are not removed. I’ve seen a few that have just been left for dead. The ballast has not been maintained so it’s a little thin, and the weeds have overgrown the rails to the point you can barely see them.
Then of course there are some lines that are turned into recreational trails for biking/walking etc. Those are re-graveled and fencing added to bridges. Then there are a few lines that everything is pulled up and the weeds are just maintained and its used as a horse/atv/snowmobile trail.
EDIT: I hate that when I take a long time to type my answer… [xx(]
Ummm, correct me if I’m wrong, but if it’s still in use, it couldn’t be considered abandoned. Are trying to ask if the interchange track would be lower in elevation than the mainline like a siding?
Don Z.
If the track is still there, it will be pretty much where it was layed. It will be rusty, overgrown, maybe falling apart ties, but there’s no reason for it to sink any more than any other track, at least not for a good long time. As has already been said, a siding or a spur is typically lower than the mainline to start with.
To answer your question, the answer is generally no, the roadbed doesn’t sink. It might erode. Actually the reverse happens. The tracks that are in service are raised as they are maintained.
Dave H.
Yea your right. I should change it to un-used. Thanks for your info every one, I’ll make sure it is lower.
You appear to have a bunch of different issues here.
- Abandoned track/route
- unused track/route
- little used track/route
- No maintenance
- Poor maintenance
- Normal maintenance
- Hgh maintenance (intense/heavy traffic)
- Road bed (and sub base)
- ballast/ballasting
- ties/lack of
- ties/condition
- rail/lack of
- rail/condition
- we can probably add vegetation
- drainage
- wash-out(s)
- land slips (onto track)
- Debris/junk/pollution.
- anything else I haven’t thought of yet because I must go get some sleep.
There was a recent good thread on modelling abandoned track with some good links.
Dave Husman is right. Rather than some tracks sinking more highly maintained tracks rise - except where bridges or tunnels create height issues - in these places old(er) ballast has to be removed before/at the same time as new ballast is put in as part of ballast cleaning or renewal. It’s exactly the same as fitting a new thick carpet… you may have to adjust your doors for them to not scuff/stick… except “raised” trains tend to bang their heads… this has happened from time to time… usually with an unusual “foriegn” car that is “overheight” coming through the route. [In the UK we have about the smallest of the standard “Standard Gauges” ('cos we started first and nobody back then could imagine Double Stacks etc)].
I don’t know about US practice but we wouldn’t think of the ballast as “road bed”… I think that that is a modellers’ / model trade term. We call everything from the planet up the “formation”… because it is formed… even in a cut. On a fill the whole fill is “formation” with the ballast just being the top part of it.
If you think about it… where would the formation go? The only way you lose formation is through washouts and peo
Just a thought to confuse the issue…
Don’t assume that a yard (or “lesser” )track will be lower than the Main due to less frequent ballast renewal…
For a start, where the Main is on a grade but the RR need the yard/track to be level the yard/track may be progessively higher than the main… or lower…
Then, if the yard/track doesn’t progress under/through something limiting height but the main does… the yard/track may have ballast top-ups without clean-outs while the main has to be kept under the height restriction - so the yard/track may rise… a little - over time.
A yard/track may be raised to get level with a facility/factory… which isn’t necessarily still there. this may be done at the design stage or later. Later development may be put in to match the track.
talking of which (mainly Eastern Roads) some roads had a smaller loading/structure gauge so that when Double stacks came along they had to make adjustments. Sometimes they raised bridges, sometimes they cut notches at the carline… other times they thinned the ballast or took the whole formation/roadbed down to increase the height clearance available.
(Load gauge is how big a car can be. Structure Gauge is the hole along the track needed to get cars built to the gauge through).
Drainage is another issue 
At Waukesha, PDC Junction on the north side of town is where the Soo crossed the MILW. In 1985, Soo bought the MILW. Then the connector at Duplainville was put in, to enable Chicago-bound trains to take the faster way in, via Milwaukee. The former MILW was railbanked, left in place. The diamond was removed. The non-used track doesn’t seem to be sinking at all.
Over the years, trackwork has taken place on the Soo (then WC, now CN). More ballast has been dumped, and the track raised. Might be 6"-12" higher than the level where the MILW crossed, and banked so the turn through there is nicer. Over time, as more ballast gets dumped with each year’s maintaince program, the older ballast does get ground down, usually by the passing of trains. New ballast is dumped on top, and the old stuff becomes the subgrade. Have to be careful with the raising in this location, as there is a bridge over a river pretty close to there. The bridge is open deck, a fixed point if you will. The track has to come down nicely to go across the bridge without problems.
That’s two extremely good points WSOR3801. [:)]
Grade is very much affected by where you need it to be to match fixed points under the track (like your bridge) as well as to get under things like bridges.
Also, where tracks cross at grade both routes need their rails to cross the damond in a constant line without bumps. this is more easily done by making both roads dead flat across the diamond but the whole area around the diamond can be moved slab like from the horizontal within (pretty small) limits… but all the approach tracks must be graded accordingly.
Whether the diamond is forced to be flat in a curve or it is tilted a speed restriction may well be required on one or both routes.
[8D]
It seems my experiance with this situation is different from what most of the folks have said…and I think it has a lot to do with the underlying ground the ballasted track was constructed over. Growing up playing in the old Wabash yard near my home, seldom used sidings slowly sinking was a common site…to the point of the ties completely disappearing. The roadbed had been built back in the 1800s, over ground that was part of the Great Black Swamp. By the 1960s, most of the roadbed had sunk/erroded till it was essentially level with the surrounding terrain. The whole effect was enhansed by the fact that even the main tracks through there were seldom well ballasted, and more often than not had the “laid on the ground” look. The track for a mostly unused in probably 30 years (the buildings they went to have been gone for probably 15 years) lumber yard siding near my aunt’s home has almost completely sunk and disappeared except for where it crossed an alley where it apparently had a more solid base. About 10 years ago, before they took out the section of rail where it crossed the street, for some reason a couple old hoppers were pushed onto the track and left set for several weeks (speculation was they’d been pushed there for somone to scrap)…by the time they gingerly moved them out (according to my aunt using a semi tractor and chains, not a locomotive) the bottoms of the wheels had a mud-line a couple inches up on them.
Thanks for all your info guys. So it all depend where the Roadbed/track is layed. It seems that the Roadbed/track would sink in unstable areas like swamps. So really it would’t sink then. And I should have it about the same hight as the main. I might make it a little lower than the main. Thanks again for your info.