What are all the hidden costs of having switches on the Mainline tracks?
Somebody at CN must have found some reason to remove as many Mainline switches as possible over the past decade on the GTW tracks in Michigan.
Andrew
Biggest reason to remove main track switches - the customer(s) that they served no longer exist. No customer, no need for the switch, no need to incur the maintenance of the switch, NO SWITCH.
Second biggest reason to remove main track switches is to remove safety threat of running into facing points.
Not so hidden. It’s adding to your overhead on track maintenance budget.
(1) If it’s in the the main track and it is in signalled territory (ABS, CTC or even a gate circuit), it must be tested at least monthly, even if it is not used, clamped or spiked shut.
(2) Harder to maintain track surface through a turnout, including a switch. Those d-a-m-n-e-d shiny things with wheels under them beat the crap out of the track structures, especially the ones with powered axles …Wheel loading is hardly uniform through a turnout. Lotsa hand work when the big machines are not available.
HINT: Geometry cars love to ding you in the area around switches/turnouts - much more than in curves or normal simple track. Dips/Warps/Twists and gage issues usually.
(3) The wear parts of a turnout (which also are more expensive than rail sitting on normal crossties) take a beating from those darned heavy shiny things. Switch points, frogs, stock rails, castings, switch OTM all have to be maintained (you can never have enough track welders around to fix just normal wear)…Guard face gage and check gage become a issue as wheels doing the truck hunting thing tear up the backside of guardrails and frog points.
(*) The industry that had the switch normally pays for the maintenance beyond the clearance point to the R/W line and rarely pays for main track switch/ frog/signal costs…and pays a track contractor to maintain beyond the R/W line. [ IF they are smart (as opposed to being cheap and stupid until its too late - which so many rail served industries are)]
(**) Lotsa whining from the operating department about slow orders and hard to throw switches can be eliminated.
Why maintain the problems, at great expense, if you don’t have to.
Switches are installed for reasons. Each switch was needed when it was installed as no railroad would go to the effort and expense of putting one in for no reason.
But things change and a switch that was needed a few years ago may be no longer needed today. However, if a switch is needed a train cannot change tracks without it so it will be installed. If a switch is not needed it can just be ignored and the trains will still run. So taking out unneeded switches is easy to overlook.
A lot of things in life are like that.
If the cost of maintaining the switch were less than the cost of removing them, I am sure they would just leave a no longer needed switch alone. And that “cost” has to include the cost of an increase in possible accidents to which a switch contributes, over contiguous track.
I’m not so sure. Work places are often busy with pressure and deadlines. A job that needs to be done where there is no pressure and no deadline can easily be overlooked, at least for a while.
Aren’t there also problems with CWR anchoring and tensioning going through the switch? And perhaps the need for some different ‘track tuning’ as there is for bridge and grade-crossing approach?
I don’t know if it’s still true, or ever was for that matter, but many years ago I was told the number of switches affected the property tax rate for railroads in Iowa. The more switches, the higher the valuation in a given area. I was told that when I asked why the railroad (the Rock Island at that time, shows how long ago it was when I asked) singled ended some little used short sidings and house tracks.
Jeff
All switches between Pavilion and Schoolcraft, Michigan that were not used daily since 2000 have been pulled.
They have Pavilion siding for access to Kalamazoo and storage of locos and cars.
In Schoolcraft they have even removed interchange switches to the line that is now the Grand Elk, formerly NS-CR-PC-NYC.
There is not many locations to set out a bad order car or park a Maintance of Way train, like they did in the past.
Andrew
Yeah, even the LION gets rid of unused switch points.
Of course the LION was too lazy to actually pull up the switches. They are spiked, and the barrier was put in place since all of the signals, and switch motors were removed. The GRS levers that used to control this crossover have been used for other applications, so no tower can give a lineup here. But if it is needed in an emergency, the MOW department could put it back in service, and a tower-man with a flag will have to manage the points and the trains.
I saw that the GDLK interchange track was severed at Schoolcraft last time we were up there (I think it was in October or maybe September. I guess that industry doesn’t get any more plastics cars, either.
That is surprising…I guess it means that CN and GDLK will do no business together, as Schoolcraft was the only interchange point (unless it’s handled at Kalamazoo somehow).
It doesn’t sound very encouraging for future use of any of the industrial spurs, either. It might have been more practical to just remove the frog and straighten out the stock rail, leaving the rest of the switch intact. Of course, then you’d still have to maintain a flanger sign…
If an industry move in and requires a siding, then a siding will be built.
ROAR
It could be that a railroad would “encourage” a customer who could do so (as in someone getting plastic pellets) to transload at an existing/remaining siding, rather than cutting a new siding into a main.
Saw a section from the frog to the switch point replaced with a straight rail and the turnout rails moved and spiked. Frog rail to turnout rail was spiked inside the 2 running rails.
You better be careful about what you do with a frog in New Jersey. We once had a war over a frog.
Blue Streak, a reason to lift a flanger’s blade would still exist; is the example in a place where snow-service is rarely required?
The amount of switches in a main track used to evaluate for property taxes…boggling minds everywhere.
Maintenance…absolutely…and I think of what I learned about track thru research, reading and running work trains on SP between 1961 and 1992 revealed stuff akin to Harry Houdini"s secrets. So many regs…so many justifications.
Track occupancy…on locals (local freights, dodgers. peddlers) when the main track switch and the the rest of the configuration require that industry service requires leaving part of the train on the main, dispatchers become more conservative (in occupancy granting) than The Tea…or Rush Limp-bo
This might work but,: if your main track runs trains that need miles to change from moving to stop and you’ve got a local freight that can’t clear the main track, would it make sense to hold an 8300 feet long. now maybe a DPU train of 11, 000 feet, somewhere it wouldn’t block a street crossing that would prevent EMTs from getting to your relative who suffered a stroke
That was.
another realm of problems with switch removabilitl.
Highest priority is main rack capacity…my presumption.
Regarding taxation of railroad property, I was told the same thing in Wisconsin many, many years ago when the C&NW removed a crossover south of the depot in Fond du Lac that had mainly been used by the Janesville passenger train. When that run was discontinued, the crossover was eliminated, much to the consternation of the local switch crew.
John Timm
It doesn’t boggle my mind. Cities and towns levy taxies on property and the improvements on that property. A switch is clearly an improvement and it will result in a step up of the property tax.
But the problem here is not that a switch or other improvement causes an increase in property taxes. The problem is that railroads have to pay property taxes on the road itself at all. There should be a recognition that railroads are a special kind of property and they should not be subject to property taxes.
In many rural governmental areas, railroads are the #1 property tax payer.