My question is that on a local railroad thr Knox & Kane, they took a grade crossing a few weeks back and paved between the rails and the road on the middle. The thing is though that the K&K ran thru the crossing completly pushing out the pavement which to me makes absolutly no sense. Has anybody ever seen or heard of a thing like this? If so why did they do this?
A short, succinct, and perhaps unfair answer: idiots.
I have seen a number of cases where road crews indiscriminately asphalted right up to the rail edges when repaving. Naturally, when a train comes through it will push asphalt mix out of the flange clearance, leaving the rutted-hump effect. Rail crews can be more aggressive when stupid paving stuff happens – they’ll dig out the flangeways, sometimes without much care for the resulting surface.
Sometimes there is petty politics involved in this sort of thing.
The “correct” solutions for grade-crossing paving usually cost more money than just pour 'n roll, but imho it’s not that hard to put a couple of boards or strips in for the flangeways and remove them around the time of the finish roll. I like preca$t $e¢tional ¢ro$$ing$ much better… but the$e are expen$ive…
csx sold us a set of rubber ones for $10,000, they used them for one season and when the tie crew came thru to redo a crossing they removed them and set them in the field beside the crossing and there they sat for 3 years, somebody finally moved them this fall. good money well spent.
The thing is tho they only paved the flangeways nothing else then like a week later ran over it. i think someone told me it was for reguaging or something like that.
Sometimes a road crew thinks they can improve the size of the flange ‘gaps’ by running blacktop or patch into the flangeways and letting the wheels cut out only what’s needed for clearance (which is surprisingly little most of the time). The problem is that the flanges don’t just compact the asphalt, they displace it – hence the lateral bumps and ruts – and can actually push and tear big chunks under common circumstances.
You might say these are the sorts of good intentions that pave roads that go to hell…
I have actually seen a derailment caused by a road crew grading a gravel road right over the tracks. I suppose they thought that the train would pu***he stuff out of the way. Wrong… as overmod says, Idiots!
…Why not first determine who actually has the responsibility to maintain the roadway / rail crossing at that spot and then the two parties get together and decide just how the problem will be handled…and if the responsible party doesn’t handle the situation put it into the legal world to assess fines until it is taken care of…One would think money would soon get action in repairing or maintaining what is needed.
Modelcar – that would be too simple, I suspect.
There are also two common sayings that may apply:
- Generally better to ask forgiveness than permission;
- Never ask a question if you don’t want to know the answer.
We see this from time to time when historic preservation buildings mysteriously get demolished around midnight…
The really best crossing material is the hard rubber prefabricated crossings that come complete with the filler panels between the rails including the flangeways, the panels between the tracks for double or multiple track lines, and sloped approaches on each side. These can be easily removed and stored during track maintenance and then put back in place. I think in the long run they save money. But track that goes for any distance in pavement is better handled by the deep-groove variation of streetcar “girder rail”, which is a rail formed with flangeway and guard rail. The last girder rail made in the USA was designed to handle both AAR and streetcar wheels, and this was the last girder rail installed in New York, on Brooklyn’s Macdonald Avenue. Just as good though is rienforced concrete roadbed. The best form is continuous reinforced concrete up the bottom of the rails, holes for fasceners in the concrete without any ties, then ordinary T-rail coated on both sides and bottom with hard durometer neoprene or othe insulating resilient plastic, screwed with resilient fasceners, and then either concrete or very hard type of asphalt poured to rail-head height with wood or plastic strips located next to the rails to form the flangeways. This latter technique was used for the new Canal Street line in New Orleans in the areas where the track is in pavement. It would be great for crossings and is not much different than what some railroads use in tunnels, except that the rare times that maintenance is required become very expensive times. I was told one reason NORTA used this in New Orleans is that now all girder rail must be imported. It isn’t made in the USA anymore.
…One thing is certain…Many, many RR crossing in our world sure do need attention. Sadly most won’t get that attention for some time to come. We have a double track CSX crossing in our fair city outskirts here that is so rough one can see the material jumping up and down as vehicles cross over it as they bounce wildly getting across it. And it’s been that way for some time. It is a main east / west ex. NYC route, ex. Conrail and is a busy line.
In California the railroad controls to 1’ on each side of the rails, per PUC General Orders. Work on grade crossings is supposed to be done by railroad crews/contractors, or at least under railroad supervision. This also applys where streets run longitudinal on the railroad tracks.
One major problem with flangeway rail on crossings – especially for high-speed or high-load lines – is the difficulty with welding it to adjacent main rail, and shaping the ends of the flangeway portion so they are relatively corrosion resistant.
There is another big problem in that the resonant frequency of the flangeway section is radically different from the main rail, which means that very careful ‘tuning’ of the approach sections – more careful than for normal crossings with stuff sitting on the ties and damping rebound, for example – will be needed. I wouldn’t want to even think about how to calculate the resonant characteristics of the flangeway section… let alone the welds and transitions!
My own feeling on this is that the flangeway channel is best fabricated from plastic, and equipped with fins or flanges to seat it against the web and base of the main rail, and some form of bracketing or cross rods to keep the ‘business end’ tight against the gauge side. If you’re familiar with rebar supports, you’ll know the sort of tech needed for this. No reason it can’t be supplied in long rolls (like landscape edging) and friction or ultrasonic welded when needed. You can use rubber strip (e.g. EDPM) as an isolator or sealant if ‘neurotic like I’.
You give away most of the advantages of regular railroad track when you go to slab concrete… and set yourself up for worlds and worlds of pain if there’s any settlement (or if the crew doesn’t know how to strike concrete perfectly flat in all the gauge areas and cambers – note that the highway crew got this wrong FOUR TIMES in the I-20/I-49 interchange in Shreveport). Drainage is also somewhat bitchy if not handled perfectly out of the box. By the way, I happen to think that some version of Pandrol clips are good “resilient fasteners” for this sort of construction. Are you familiar with the dynamics of cast-concrete roadbeds as speed (and applied loads) begin to increase?
For street running, the slab
overmod – another problem you didn’t mention with concrete slab under a grade crossing (or any other short application directly under a rail) is the radical change in stiffness of the roadbed/slab at the end of the slab. Almost guaranteed site for fatigue cracks in the rail. Even if everything is perfecly lined when there is no load.
Don’t get me going on historic buildings with disappearing acts, or the antics of highwaymen trying to build a road!
Based on the comments above the old adage still holds true:
If you cannot hold a job in the real world you work for government.
The DOTs or Highway Commissions are government. Enough said.
PS: A correlary to the above is: If you cannot hold a government job you can teach it. We have all seen dunder head college professors.
There is a problem with paving inbetween RR tracks
When the temperature reaches -25, not uncommon for up here, nor is -40 Pavement heaves and cracks, and can bust the reails while doing so- That is why if you’ll notice highways are now being made out of concrete. that doesn’t crack, heave, and is pretty much weather resistant.
So concrete GOOD, asphault BAD
At the crossing of Route 422 in PA, there is a crossing that was dont not too long ago. Although it was nice and smooth (they used copncrete slabs), all the trucks pounding it at full speed didn’t take long to make it rough. One of the tiles had somehow even been ripped out, even though they all sank below the road a bit from the traffic. How the hell did it get ripped out? Just recently, a road crew came and put blacktop in the missing space, but it’s so horrible now already that everybody just goes off to the right. Of course, even that’s becoming rough. While asking about those concrete tiles, I heard one of the track gang guys mention that one of the tiles at a crossing done near the end of August had already sank a bit. What exactly contributes to this? I even watched these guys do a terrific job with it, and thought that crossing would last a while without trouble.
edit-One more question about crossings. Before the restoration, the crossings from the old track had become so horrible, even at very low speed and way off to the side, you took a huge bump. Why is it that when these crossings get bad like this, they don’t just rip out the rail and do the crossing? Even after paving over the rail, it doesn’t take long for it to become rough again. What’s with the lack of rail removal?
Here in Wisconsin, the railroad company is responsible for the maintenance of the crossing. Our highway crews don’t touch a crossing (except in emergency, which truly has to be for a highway crew to touch a crossing), and the railroad forces don’t mess with the road. The big trick is the coordination.
I’ve recently repaved two crossings using a rubber flange guard with asphalt inbetween them and asphalt right up to the edge of the rail on the outside of the gage. So, far it seems to be holding up well as the asphalt on the approaches will flex somewhat with the pounding the rail gets and the rubber on the inside helps keep the edge of the asphalt from going bad due to heat expansion and contraction against an unmovable object. I’ll let you know how long they last, or where they fail first.
My guess is the area in the gage will go first because it was impossible to get the same compaction of the material as the roller could only consolidate the asphalt mat as far as the rail head and no more. A few thousand trucks will cause only the wheel tracks in the asphalt to compact further resulting in ruts. Time will tell.
Jamie
We also used a wedge of asphalt at the ends of the concrete slab on one of the crossings to provide a transision in the stiffness or modulus of the roadbed for the tracks. This has only been in use for one year, but I don’t see any problems so far.
Ballast good. Asphalt bad.
From a trackman’s point of view, ballast cannot be tamped if you cover it with asphalt. Perhaps a cold patch bandaid until a proper gage side crossing plank could be located.
The only place asphalt belongs is in the approaches and under the ballast as sub-ballast stabilisation.
Where, exactly, are you saying it is bad? I’ve used it in both places as a subgrade treatment and as a crossing material.