Well I’m sure the bids will go out this spring to scrap the 5.9 miles of the Minnesota Zephyr line which was formerly the BN branch that came out from White Bear Lake. Can 2 guys with a truck and trailer do this or is there more equipment needed to do this. Switches look to be more complicated to do. Do they usually have them haul away the ties too or can one contractor scrap the line and another take care of the ties and the rest?
A lot depends on the condition of the ties - rotten or basically sound ?- and the quaility and intended use of the rail. Also, is the track covered or buried much in brush, dirt, other debris ?
Two guys with the right equipment can do it, but it will be a slow process - not more than 200 to 300 ft. per day, esp. if they have to remove all the ties. A truck and trailer is not enough, unless it is on hi-rail wheels or you can drive along or down almost the entire length of the tracks, which is rare - and then what do they do about backing up all that way ? How do they get past or over the first open-deck bridge ? A rail train is probably not economic for a project this small, unlkess the rail is (rarely) large and in good enough condition to be welded and reused.
If the ties are poor, go through with a tracked front-end loader or dozer and a set of rail tongs - hold the ties down by stopping with the tracks right next to the rail, hook on the rail tongs, and lift. Leaves a lot of loose spikes laying around, though = flat tires !
The same machine then usually works real well to drag long strings of the rails (like 200 - 300 ft.) to the nearest road crossing or other access point, where the rest of the joint bars can be removed - torch or impact wrench, depends on how rusted they are.
If the ties are sound, you might break some old and smaller rails by doing it that way - also splinter the ties and ruin their salvage value. In that case, a hydraulic spike puller of some kind might be well advised, to “de-construct” it more carefully.
Switches are indeed more complicated. Unless they’re entirely all scrap for sure - which is rare - best to take them apart carefully with the spike puller, put all the special plates in a single barrel and label it (and anything else that isn’t obvious) with a pai
Boyd,
Most scrappers will come out with some large equipment and pick up the rail(usually it is loaded into gondola type cars). A 39’ stick of 100# rail weighs about 1300#'s! There could be multiple scrappers, but most current line removal is handled by a single bidder. I remember seeing a scrapping operation in the Dakota’s on an old MILW line. They had a CAT with a ‘plow’ on the front end that wedged between the rails and broke them free from the ties. The rail was old and they torched it apart. The rail was picked up with a front-end loader that dumped it into rail cars. Ties were dug out with rear claws on the CAT. They were stopped at Monango Crossing while the SOO was removing the diamond when I saw them.
Jim
Those fellows who “scrapped” a portion of the EBT did pretty well with limited resources, from what I’ve heard.
Here is an image of just such an operation as it occured on the Glenfield and Western Railroad on New York’s Tug Hill in the 1930’s. Given that it was a railroad centered around logging, it’s possible the ties weren’t treated, or else they just didn’t care. It doesn’t appear that they are worried about picking them up.
Note that they are using a donkey engine on a flat car to pull the individual rails onto the gondola.
I cropped the previous image - here is the whole shot.
http://i661.photobucket.com/albums/uu338/tree068/Railpickup.jpg
A co-worker gave me a group of photographic prints after he found them in a book he purchased in a thrift store. This is one of them Curiously, they appear to be original prints from a negative, not commercially printed half-tones. Others include apparent shots from lumber camps on Tug Hill.
Well the line is isolated so they won’t be hauling this stuff out by rail car. No overgrowth to deal with but ties are down in the dirt in some areas. Your answers 86ed the little thoughts I had of bidding on even a short section. The is a section about a mile long going out of downtown Stillwater that was owned by the BN and not the Zephyr and now I think legally is abandoned. On spot has a big washout under the tracks and then the south end there is 12 years worth of overgrowth (trees) that will have to be dealt with. They might wait to deal with that section of the tracks until the new bridge is built in 2013 or before.
Boyd, & others -
Coincidentally, today I ran across this collection of photos from the current (Oct. 2008 through Jan. 2009) removal of about 8 route-miles (16 track-miles) of the former Reading Co.'s (then ConRail, now SEPTA) double-track Bethlehem Branch, from just south of Coopersburg, Lehigh Co., PA, through Upper and Lower Saucon Twps. to the Hellertown, Northampton Co., PA. The collection is named “RAILS-TO-TRAILS PROJECT”, and consists of 262 photos over 5 pages. From my brief review, pages 2, 4, and 5 show the most details of the actual removal operation. This one is a little different from those described above - this line is also mostly isolated, and was heavily overgrown before they started - but the rail is really good stuff, 130-lb. RE section with only moderate wear.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bigpistol/sets/72157607948633189/
Hope this is informative - probably more than you wanted to know ?
- Paul North.
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in 1977 they scrapped the old mopac line that ran in front of my house . they ran a loco with a couple of gondolas down the track to the end and started working their way back . fishplate bolts were torched and spikes were pulled mostly by backhoe . they had a frontend loader on hand also . plus a small dozier . as they cut the rail loose they dragged the rail up to the gondolas and loaded it onboard . fishplates and tieplates and spikes were stacked in piles , then loaded with the backhoe . they ran the dozier along the ties on on end catching the corners and that lifted the ties up and out of their resting place , effectively windrowing them . these were picked up with forks on the frontend loader and dumped into a gondola .there was very little ballast on this line , very depressing to whatch . quite effectively about a half mile of line was pulled in a day . of course some more clean up was required but that was basically it. and so the railline that was at one time part of the "spiderweb railway "and a major carrier of citrus fruit out of the riogrande valley of texas north of edinburg courtesy of missouri pacific became nothing more than a memory in a young boys mind .
Either way, it stinks whenever they have to scrap a line, means its gone. But ironically a line that has been dormant for years can suddenly have a train on it. After all, lets remember…the last train to ever run on a particular line is the one thats scrapping it.
And maybe some day when we are running out of oil we will be re-laying tracks all over to haul freight to every town on the map.
[color=green]A big difference will be that those lines will only go to the edge of town. Since many towns grew up around the railroad station, the tracks eventually ran through the middle of town, a situation many such towns find undesireable. Of course, then things will grow around the new railhead…[/color]
http://www.edenprairiehistory.org/EPHistory/tracks.htm
Above linked is a photo I took in 1991 of the removal of my beloved original M&StL mainline, in the Chanhassen, MN area of Carver County just southwest of Riley Lake. You can see the ledge along the roadbed cut in the background. That ledge was made in 1901 to temporarily accommodate the track during a massive line re-location, which resulted in the track being located to where it is in the photograph. From its original construction in 1871, and continuing to 1902, the line was located on a different, steeper and more winding route through this vicinity where it dropped down from the high land of Eden Prairie to the Minnesota River valley, and on to Chaska.
Since 1960, this was a C&NW track. At the time of removal, the track was year 1959, 115 lb. rail with deep crushed rock ballast, and a fair amount of ties suitable for re-use. I understand that the rail was re-rolled.
Who usually takes care of the removal of signal equipment…the railroad itself or a separate contractor?
I remember back in 81 or 82 when the Milwaukee abandoned their Iowa Iine through Oxford Juction Iowa, they removed only the track and ties leaving some grade crossing signals and the telegraph pole line. The signals remained in place up until the late 80’s early 90’s. The Rock Island left some block signals in place on their line between West Liberty and Cedar Rapids when they abandoned that line in the early eighties that still remain today.
Jeff
Depends on how the RR elects to specify it. If the equipment would be of some further use to them, they’ll usually have removed it already by then, or specify that it’s to stay and they’ll come get it later. Occasionally, the specs may tell the conntractor to carefully remove it and deliver it to the railroad’s storehouse or C&S Dept. someplace, at the contractor’s expense, etc.
Otherwise, the RR could let the contractor take it and get whatever he can for it as scrap metal.
- Paul North.
Old wayside signals have a negative scrap value. In the past they were often just left behind. I know of a place right in the middle of the glass-box office-tower jungle of Washington, D.C., where there is still a forsaken wayside signal.
Today the State Departments of Environmental Quality won’t let a railway leave the unwanted junk behind and will make the abandoning railway remove and dispose of everything, including the signals. Sometimes there will be new grade-crossing signals, and those have re-use potential, but it’s highly unusual for the wayside signals to be anything but old and crispy.
If it’s reusable equipment, the railway will usually remove it, otherwise it’s left for the scrapper.
Pole lines are almost always removed by a contractor.
RWM