Hello everyone! I was recently doing some train watching near Kimmel, Indiana and saw something unusual. On one of the tracks, both rails had a pattern of burnt and melted spots with a depth of about one-quarter to one-half of an inch. To me it looked like where a locomotive had sat and spun it’s wheels and actually melted the rail head. How can this happen? Wouldn’t the crew hear this as I would assume it would make one H#*! of a screeching noise. And also, wouldn’t you smell hot steel? The pattern seemed to match the wheel spacing of a B-B truck.
There is a rather well-known picture of the results of a B-B sitting in one place with its wheels spinning, apparently for a significant amount of time - IIRC, it had managed to wear, if not completely, most of the way through the head of the rail. Had to be a bear to get moved. In the picture the locomotive is no longer in the hole it dug for itself.
Sound levels at one frequency can cancel out sound leveles at other frequencies. A diesel engine operating at moderate to high rpms and loading can become quite loud, especially to a locomotive operator. This would eliminate the sound of the screeching wheels. Also, it is conceivable that the crewman were preoccupied and did not notice the lack of movement of the scenery past the windows.
Modern locomotive have to conform to noise abatement as well as air pollution standards. This was not always the case with older locomotives.
…I have seen a picture noted above where a wheel form was melted down well into the rail head…Those wheels must have been in fine shape too after forming that gouge in the rail{s}…
i was called on a wreck crew few years ago…loaded grain hopper got run off the end of track…soft ground conditions made it impossible to jack it up so we towed it with a GP-38-2 and yes a late model EMD 4 axle can sit in one spot and “smoke the tires”…both the road forman and the division engineer decided on the bulldozer after grinding about a 1/4 inch off the railhead…now theres a big berm and reflective markers at the end of tracks in Webberville
So that’s how you put in a speed bump for a locomotive…
At the trolley museum, we’ve got a small 4-wheel Plymouth deisel, i’d estimate around 15 tons (we’re not really sure), but when it spins the wheels, it’s the noise and the vibration of the entire locomotive that makes it clearly evident, especially when the track is slightly wider than normal, because the locomotive sort of slide around from side to side a bit while standing still. Very loud, lots of smoke.
All I see is a roadmaster with blood in his eye. You operating guys better leave pretty pronto or you’re gonna change the rail on your own dime.[:-^][:-^][:-^]
