June 2017 Ask MR

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

A couple notes on the answers to the Ask MR column in the June issue.

On the question about a new spur, you can check the major class one railroad’s websites and there will be the railroad’s processes and standards for industrial track and development listed, for example here are the UP’s pages :

https://www.up.com/customers/ind-dev/developers/index.htm

and the track design specs:

https://www.up.com/customers/ind-dev/operations/specs/track/index.htm

On the question about cranes:

Technical point, the question was about cranes for “maintenance crews” to use, but the picture was of a wrecking crane. “Maintenance” implies the “maintenance of way” which is the engineering department. The wrecker belongs to the mechanical department. The engineering department has bridge and “Burro” cranes but they are not designed to or used to pick up cars. Bridge cranes work on bridges, track panels and pile drivers, Burro cranes pick up small pieces of track material (rails, frogs, crossing panels, etc). Wrecking cranes are designed to pick up cars and locomotives. Wrecking cranes can be used to pick up track panels at a derailment and assembled bridge girder sections (because they heavier than most bridge cranes can handle).

Generally though wreckers are not used by the maintenance of way and the people who operate and maintain them are not engineering employees.

2

Dave,In my 9 1/2 years experience I seen MOW/B&B crew use a wrecker once because of the heavy lifting involved a replacement steel bridge grider.

Now if Chessie could have used a contractors heavy duty crane to do the work they would have since it would have been cheaper.

3

Its pretty rare, but it happens. Conrail was upgrading the “high line” bridge through Phillie and had both the CR and AMTK wreckers on a work train on one main track and a second train on the other main. The wreckers had a flat between them. They would pick up a bridge section, set it on the flat, pull back to the other train, set the old bridge section on an empty car on that train, pick up the new section and put it on the flat between them, shove back out to the “hole” and set the new bridge section in the hole. They replaced 3 bridge sections that way, using the same spreader bars they would use to pick up an engine.

This was back in the late 70’s.