Hi guys… I’m looking at detailing my rail with fish plates. As they were used to bolt together rail, I assume the distance apart must be the length of a rail. Can anyone out there tell me how far apart they would go and are they inside AND outside the rail? (By the way, I’m modelling Pennsy 1955).
Also, anyone know of any good sources of detailed photos of switch yards and rail? I’m looking for all that detail along the track.
Thanks in adavance!
Barry [8D]
Unless the PRR used some non-standard length during the 1950s, your rail joints ought to be 39’ apart, as far as I’m aware. The fishplates - joint bars - are fitted on both sides of the rail. Cheers, Mark.
What scale are you in???
You’re just gonna hate this answer…
Fishplates are fitted at the rail ends as you suggest [(-D]
A pretty standard US rail length is 40’. It seems to have stayed that way since 40’ cars became common. Pennsy would almost certainly be 40’… but they are also one of the roads that experimented with 60’ quite early … partly because of the weight of the traffic they carried and because they were in the area of steel rail production. The next step longer in the US would be ribbon rail but that would be after your era.
The thing is… the planet doesn’t come in units of 40’… curves and the inconvenient way people don’t put towns and stuff in multiples of 40’ apart mean that you end up needing odd lengths at times to get the length right. The common odd lengths are 20’ and 30’ (Helped move two of the latter a couple of weeks back).
Also… the odd length rails are often called “closures” because they close up the gaps. If a gap is less than 20’ in a main track it will not be filled with one rail but the next 40’ will be replaced by a short length as well… e.g a 10’ won’t be put in but a 30’ then a 20’.
Next… you’ll have to ask someone who knows the Pennsy this… did they normally join their rail ends square - 50/50 stagger them - or join them where they fell?
Mark, above has beaten me to it and said 39’ rails. I’ve been told this was to get rails into 40’gons. I don’t know whether this is true… evidence someone please? (Please don’t mail me a full sized length of rail)!
Unless you are going to roll or extrude your own rail there is little point in researching masses of rail detail because you are stuck with what the suppliers offer.
For the US you want Flat Bottom (FB) rail spiked to the ties. In H0 for a heavy road like the PRR you could use code 100 for the main and code 83 for yards. Micro Engin
Hi
Fish plates come in pair’s one for outside and one for inside the rail. they are set in square IE in line
At signals the plates and signal are in line as well
As for rail length this works on railway standards every thing is standard as long as it is different[:)]
You will see plates in line, staggered spaced at anything from 6’ up to the standard 39’ maybe even a bit further apart.
regards John
Beg pardon! The question referred to Pennsylvania Railroad standards. American practice is to stagger the rail joints; i.e. the joint on one rail will fall at the (approximate) midpoint of the other rail. Incidentally, a large part of the PRR main line was laid with 152 pound rail - the only rail which can be accurately modeled with code 100 flex track in HO.
Chuck (who models squared rail joints - standard Japanese practice)
Annnnnnnd…if you REALLY want to get prototypical…not only stagger the rail joints; stagger your lengths of rails, too. RRs (in order to save $$$) only cut out the damaged area or length of track. That may have been a full 39’ section or only a 9’ section. Yards, in particular, were notorious for having short sections of track in them.
Tom
Hello Barry,
Do you want the bad news or the worse news?
The bad news is that few people bother to photograph track. Hence you have to search through many photographs to find track as a sideline (sorry if that has a double meaning).
The worse news? All railroads are different, and they change over time. So double away and look for photos of Pennsy in the 1950’s.
Sorry if that sounds a bit pessimistic, but notice how there are many loco shots around, but far less good wagons? And nobody took photos of track back in those days.[:(]
PS. The guys in the States will probably hammer me for writing “All railroads are different”. They have standards across the many systems in the US, but betcha there were variations from the standards.
Hi John:
You win the bet.
In at least one instance, staggered rail joints were not used by an American railroad. The Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes (the most famous of the Maine Two Footers) put the joints in both rails at the same place. Would that be called squared rail joints ?
So, John, what currency do we settle this bet in ?!
-Ed
They most certainly were different and haven’t standardised yet… far too many miles to change it all just to standardise.
You might as well go straight to the source for PRR trackage. This web site, http://prr.railfan.net/standards/standards.cgi?sortby=1&sortdir=up has many of the PRR’s standard drawings. What is most applicable to this discussion are the drawings of the joint bars (fish plates) and the drawings of tie spacing which show the length of rail used and how the rails were staggered. The drawings available for tie spacing are a bit older and only show the earlier standard of 33 feet rail. By 1955, with flat cars commonly 40 feet long, the standard rail length was changed to 39 feet. I have Pere Marquette tie spacing drawings that show both 39 and 33 feet rail lengths in use. I would think that in 1955, you would probably use 39 foot long rail for mainlines while the 33 foot long rail would have been mostly left in yards and sidings as the 33 foot rail was replaced on the mainline and relaid elsewhere.
[quote user=“Dave-the-Train”]
They most certainly were different and haven’t standardised yet… far too many miles to change it all just to standardise.
Can you imagine telling an American how to build his railroad? Don’t be silly!
There were no standards in the early years …
When the ARA (or was it AAR that came first) started to bring out standards there was already a whole mass of equipment in use. They couldn’t junk it all and start over.
ARA came first. The AAR was formed in the 1930s.
PRR was one of the most heavily built roads and a search of old professional journals -where I started to look at US RR - will show you lots of PRR drawings of their Standard cars… even these had modifications. The great PRR recognised that things had to be upgraded (or corrected).
The Harriman Lines did a lot of standardising to keep costs down within their own system… but they weren’t standard to anyone else. Who was going to dictate standards to them?
Harriman standards applied when Harriman was alive, sort of, but after WWI, SP and UP diverged completely in most practices.
The biggest pressure to standardise came from the Interstate Transport Commission (think that’s correct) ITC regulated interchange traffic. The simple rule was that if you wanted to interchange your cars you conformed or your cars didn’t interchnage… the $ ruled. Standardisation spread. To some extent the big-boys were able to use this to squeeze the little operators… who couldn’t afford to upgrade their
Yep, across the English speaking world they are called fish plates, but in the US they call them joint bars.[(-D] Joint bars are something altogether different in Amsterdam.
Thanks Ed, but I couldn’t take your money. I was betting on a certainty.
Having spent a significant part of my career on railways elsewhere than the U.S. I get some funny looks from my colleagues here in the states when I forget where I am and refer to sleepers, banking engines, engine drivers, couchettes, etc.
That “large part” of the PRR main line was only the four tracks around Horseshoe Curve and a few hundred feet either side of the curve. That code 100 …err, 152 pound rail was too durned expensive even for the Standard Railroad of the World!
It may also be of interest to note that rail on the NYC, the PRR, and probably many other roads was normally swapped from one side of the track to the other – north rail moved to the south side of the track and vice versa – when the rail was about half worn out. When this had been done once, the rail might be used yet again in yards or other secondary track. I don’t know if this is still done though. Labor costs may have made this an obsolete practice.
Chuck
(the former NYC-PC Chuck)
cefinkjr
All sorts of things were done to try to get more life out of rail. Rails could also be turned end-for-end to use the 2nd gauge face. There is a distinct problem though that the wear and tear on rail in use in one position is enough to increase the risk of rail fracture so, generally, the practice has declined. Higher line speeds and heavy tonnage on the remaining roads plus the cost of stoppages and compensation claims have probaly done more to stop the practices than labour costs. Rail was swapped or turned back in the days of manual labour when renewing rail was more expensive. Now rail is changed by machine. There is also the cost of environmental impact to take into account both in changing rail and derailments.
1435mm
Thanks for the corrections on my earlier notes. I’m still under the impression that interchange car standards wer enforced by someone other than ARA/AAR (Never can recall which comes forst). Did they set the standards and someone else enforce them?
Weird and wacky couplers seem to have lasted to about 1900. I did once know the date that link and pin were banned. Sometime in the 1880s I think.
Harriman standards applied when Harriman was alive, sort of, but after WWI, SP and UP diverged completely in most practices.
Barry,
The guys have given you a lot of good information, at the risk of covering some ground again, here are some things I can contribute.
Generally speaking rail is 39’ long. The next lower standard length is 33’, which is what you get when you crop the ends of a 39’ rail. When improperly maintained, or from age, the rail ends get bent down and the only way to fix that is crop it. Of course, this adds more joints, which means more maintenance. It’s a vicious cycle. There is a machine out there called a rail straightener which sounds like a good idea. Unfortunately, after being straightened with one of these machines (And even while straightening), a fairly large percentage break.
After the 33’ length you get the “shorts”, which are anything needed to fill a gap.
FB or Flat Bottom rail must be a UK term, it’s not a term used in the US.
Rail is designated by the weight per yard, 90, 100, 130, etc. There are also letters in that rail designation, PRR, PS, LV, RE, ASCE, etc. Many of these are the railroad that came up with this rail section, PRR, LV and RDG are pretty self-explanatory. PS is Pennsylvania Standard, I can’t remember what RE means, but there are enough rail sections out there to give you a headache. Plus, they have many different spacings for the drillings on the ends, so the bars and rails have to match.
There are also numerous types and sizes of tie plates, rail anchors, and even track bolts (Nuts and washers too) that match the various rail sections. And that’s not even getting into the plates and other jewelry that goes with welded rail on wood or concrete ties.
The only joint bars with inside/outside that I’m familiar with are Compromise (Comp) Joint bars. These are exactly what they sound like, they compromise the joints between different rail sections. They come in left and right hand versions due to the head of the rail being a different width and the need to keep the gage the same on the “gage” side. Railroads don’t ca
Wow! Thank you all from Dave the Train to Mike 0659. Who would have thought such a simple question would have brought forward such a great avalanche of information and discussion? Fish plates? OK, it’s a British term, but I quoted it because the Walther’s catalog uses that term too, so, naturally, I thought all you the US guys would know it.
My reason for the question is for detail close up in certain areas. I sure ain’t going to do this on every stretch of rail! (I maybe be English but I ain’t THAT eccentric!!!) No, I’ve seen a few photos in the past in MR where ‘fish plates’ have been used and it looks pretty neat. What I would do is put them on up close track only, on selective stretches of rail for detailed effect.
Anyway, I’m in re-build mode at the moment having ripped out my old layout and now laying the foundations for my new double decker. Yep, I’ll post photos as and when, (especially of the joint bars on sections selected) but you’ll have to be patient, I’ve a way to go yet!
So, as usual the guys on the Prototype pages have come up with great information and made for great reading. I salute you all dear colleagues!!! And thanks…
Barry [8D]
Actually, I believe the 33 foot long rail is an older standard length from when freight cars were less than 40 feet long and not cropped 39 foot long rail. I have Pere Marquette maintenance of way drawings and the older ones from 1913 show standard tie spacings for 30 and 33 foot rail while drawings for 39 foot rail are dated 1926. In the previously linked PRR drawings, the tie spacing drawings were all from around 1908 and they all showed only 33 foot rail tie spacing drawings.
I am! AND proud of it!
Where are you?
Do you think we need soemthing to replace the NMRA (OOPS! Heresy!)