How far apart should I place railbars from each other?
Thanks in advance
What do you mean by railbars?
The rails?
Joint bars?
Dave H.
joint bars.
IIRC rail comes in 39’ lengths. If possible, track was laid so that the joints were staggered, i.e. not directly across from each other on the two rails.
Aah!
Prior to switching to welded rail, the standard rail length was 39 feet. That is about 5.38 inches HO. That size was to accomodate 40 foot flats and gons for shipping. Also, that was about the maximum length that could be readily handled by the track gang. Thirty nine feet is 13 yards times 135/yard equals 1,755 pounds, or almost a ton per length.
Ribbon (welded) rail was shipped in very long lengths in multiple car trains. It was then rolled off right onto the ties as the train moved forward.
If you are trying to super detail your track, this is a good addition. I only use them in foreground areas where they are readily in view. By the way, those in the Walthers catalog are just glue on bars, they do not actually connect rail sections in lieu of rail joiners.
The rail joints were usually staggered which resulted in the clickety clacking that lulled sleeping car inhabitants to sleep.
Railbars as US RR have called them for ages, also known as fishplates almost everywhere English is spoken, should be the width of the rail apart… [swg] Seriously, they are used in pairs with either 4 or 6 bolts depending on era, RR and location specific practices.
How far aprt they should be along the rail depends again on the specific practices. The US used a huge amount of 40’ rail. This is often siad to be 39’ so that rails will drop into a 40’gon but I have never seen this quoted in anRR publication or technical journal. From at lest the turn of the century (19 ->20) there were efforts to extend the length to 60’ and beyond. 60’ became common in the UK.
Modern practice uses ribbon rail (also known as continuous welded rail - CWR) which gets factory welded into train lengths (depending on how long a rail train the RR uses) and then welded together in situ between the long lengths. To allow for rail movement with heating, cooling and traffic flow expansion joints (known also as “breathers”) are put in as required. This requirement will be site specific… but there is generally a breather between a long length of welded track and any switch so thet movement of the long rail doesn’t affect the geometry of the switch.
There was quite a long thread on railbars earlier in the year. I’ll see if I can find the link.
[8D]
While I was writing my last post… [8D]
Big Rusty quotes length as I’ve heard and weight… weight is extremely RR and era specific. It goes from 60lb (Imperial) to 220 lb (Imp) depending on where and when. Other threads have some nice stuff on using the different sizes of ril availalble commercially to give a good impression of older/lighter rail in yards and side tracks to newer/heavier rail in main tracks. (Tie spacing goes with this… but - beware… lighter rail may mean more clowely spaced ties [:D]).
Weekend before last out on track I was talking with a guy who started when not just plain rail but all the big bits of switches were still shifted around by hand… including lowering them off falt cars by rope. This probably continued in the US a lot later than might be expected. We agreed that the old MoW men were something of a different breed. They worked hard and drank hard. If you liked your face the shape it was you didn’t get into an argument with one.
Early ribbon rail was unloaded by putting an anchor in the track, linking it to the, usually two, rails to be unloaded on the back of the train with a chain and then pulling the train out from under it. The far end of the rail was s
Try these…
http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/949646/ShowPost.aspx
http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/959045/ShowPost.aspx
http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/896353/ShowPost.aspx
[8D]
In the US those are called joint bars. The real railroads have both 4 and 6 bolt bars. so you can use the full piece or trim off two bolts.
They were spaced about 30 feet apart in the early 1800’s, then spaced out to 33 feet in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and then in the early 1900’s they went to 39 ft. Modern stick rail is 78 ft long, but virtually all of that is welded into 1/4 mile “continuous welded rail”. Plants also weld 39 ft sticks into CWR.
In the US virtually all the rails are staggered to avoid harmonic and rail pounding problems. The bolts are also alternated in each joint, with half having the nut between the rails and half having the nut outside the rails. If you look at the Walthers joint bar you can see that.
Early joint bars looked like a angle iron, which is why a common American slang name for joint bars is “angle bars”. More modern joint bars are closer to an oval or C in shape that fits between the head and the web of the rail The Walthers bars are of that design.
In addition ther are insulated joint bars for electrical gaps in signal installations they have a yellow or orange plastic piece between the joint bar and the rails and under the bolts. More modern insulated joint bars are yellow, orange, blue or green plastic.
Dave H.