I was doing some train watching from a small cliff today. I heard the crossing gates come down and heard a noise like no train I ever heard before. I couldn’t see exactly what it was. When it rounded the curve I grabbed the video camera. I couldn’t believe it. This thing was huge. I know the pics are not that great, but the video is outstanding. It was spraying a huge wall of water out the right side. The sparks were amazing. It shut down the grinders before going over the road crossing. Behind it was a guy in a Durango that had the track wheels on it. He stopped to left up the wheels at the crossing. I asked him if the beast was comming back down and he said probably. He said thay use it 2 times a year. What luck it was that I happen to be there at that time.
They are impressive beasts, aren’t they? (Even more so at night.) Saw my first one driving home last summer about 10 PM. It lit up the area 'cause sparks were flying everywhere…
I wish it would have been at night. Also like you said, from what I heard at night they are a sight. Actually after it got up the track a hundred yards or so I could see under it from behind and the thing was glowing bright orange. I noticed that between the tracks it looked like oil or something like iol sprayed there. I wonder if it was some sort of cutting or grinding oil???
I think they are used on curves. I also don;t think they grind the tops of the rails, they grind the inside of the rails were the flanges rub while going into a curve. Even had the same name LORAM on the front, it was 12 cars long with 6 tank cars. Click on the link below, that is exactly what it was.
I saw one about 5 or maybe 6 years ago. I was on my way home from work. It was at night. The sparks coming off this thing was incredible and the noise was something awful. As I recall this thing was operating on a straight section of the track. Most impressive.
Loram is the name of the contractor that operates rail grinding and other railroad maintenance of way functions. A photo of their rail grinder is at http://www.loram.com/railgrinding2.html
I never see this type of equiptment here in the big city
the trains run day and night and the rail shines
but I see a lot of snow movers mostly wedge type
but thanks for some cool links
gasturbine the op photos seem dark at first, but look better now. I think that one you snaped a photo of was the very rare, and dirty, worker train… and that one on the LORAM home page. was too clean and too new
its amazing they have to haul all of them tank cars with water around, just to stop fire from the grinding operation. the rail must get worn down after a few passes
thanks for starting this thread and all the posted links
The front of the train was cleaner then the other cars. It was not the work train, this thing was grinding. I have the video of the front few cars, followed by a car spraying water with great force, then came the grinding cars followed by water tanks. It might have had grinding cars also before the water cars. It was not grinding when it came by, just spraying water. I grabbed the camera again after it was up the tracks a bit and could see the glowing sparks from the grinding wheels under the train. But it was going straight away from me so I am not sure what cars actually did the grinding.
The lead unit is a basic GP motor really, and from wat I saw of the one in our yard any car with a large prime mover on it is a grinding wheel car. Yes they work curves and straights usually in very high tonnage areas. They can actually force metal that has been misshaped by the heavy loads back up onto the rail head itself(this from a MOW guy)
They are great to watch but be careful. When one was travesing the old C&NW line along my old lumber route a UP offical asked us at the lumber yard I was at to please go inside till it passed. He stated in case a wheel ( grinding one) broke we would be out of harms way.
Rail head grinding has been common in Europe since at least the early 80s.
The original trains I worked with were enormous, incredibly noisy machines that seemed to have about five generator/grinding cars and a control car. We ran neither water tanks nor converted fire control cabooses with ours but the UK is generally a bit wetter than the US.
More recent grinders come in different sizes from several cars to single large tamper size. The smaller ones seem to wark faster making a number of passes where necessary. I expect that the modern ones have GPS.
I believe that the early ones did a whole bunch of jobs at the same time in one pass… making the slow speed necessary. They were all manned by Italians from the “Speno” company that leased the machines to British Rail. Their rumoured cost was phenomenal… but they clearly paid for themselves in extended rail life.
To quote from the Loram website above…
"Rail is the single most valuable asset of most railways. The wheel/rail interface of any railroad is a sophisticated and much talked about subject, primarily because of the cost involved in premature rail change outs. Typical problems encountered on all railroads include shelling, spalling, side wear, plastic flow, dipped welds, corrugation and fatigue as well as unique challenges of noise control and ride quality.
Rail grinding is considered the single most effective maintenance practice to control the effects of rolling contact fatigue, restore profile and maximize value from the rail asset".
A rolling steel wheel on a steel rail is like a succession of hammer blows. With time and load this cold hammers the rail in the same sort of way that a blacksmith hot hammers any piece of metal into a different shape. The cold hammering has some additional effects such as the spalling, and fatigue… well, in fact all of the features that are less evident in hot work… this is because hot metal is
