“weak” tie… I was struggling to find a suitable expression - hence the quotes.
In this case I mean a tie that hasn’t even reached the first stage of defective. A good MOW man would firstly know where his trouble spots were and secondly know what the particular wood/presevative/immediate environment effects looked like in a sleeper that would need changing in a week or two… even three. The old boys were like that. I think that some of them could also even smell and hear problems… and that’s not waffle.
So, bearing in mind weight and frequency of traffic, it is better to be able to spot a problem before it is a problem and plan an early change out. The aim is to never have any real problems.
There was a brief time when one line I was signalman on had a really good S&T Tech (they don’t exist any more). What we did was have “failures” and “problems” when we wanted them and just enough so that management didn’t decide that they could cut back and take away our tech. While we had him we never had any failures. This was also because we had a reasonable bunch of Signalmen who all knew how to listen to and feel their signalboxes so that they knew when an indicator needle or whatever didn’t move right. When that happened they would make a note and let the tech know. We kept ahead of the game… like it should be done.
Back at the ties…
A patch that was known to play up would probably have fresh or at least seriously recyclable ties on hand. A good ganger would have a secret stash or three. When a bad’un showed it could be swapped out ASAP if little or nothing else was on. The fact that it had been done didn’t necessarily get booked… a store of jobs done could make the difference between having to go out on a freezing stormy night and being tucked up warm in the mess room… or - better still - hom
Legend has it that an Oxbridge final exam asked “What is a question”? One student wrote “If this is a question. This is an answer”. The legend has it that he/she received a First.
Far better than that…
A young man asked a rabbi “Why do Jews always answer a question with a question”? The rabbi thought for a very long time before he replied. “Why not”?
I stained a lot of ties using different colors of stain as described by other contributors. I used a trick which I read at the time, and worked very well. I used cut off bottom of panty hose to put the ties in for dipping and absorbing the stain… then pulling them out and emptying the ties on to newspaper or wax paper to dry.
Much easier to fish all yhose little buggers out of the stain (1/2 dozen shades of Minwax stain for me) when they’re neatly corralled in the toe of a length of panty hose.
BTW, cut the rest of the panty hose into squares and strain your paint from the mixing jars onto the airbrushing jars.