Railroad Track Maintenance - and resulting "looks"

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Shawnee started a great thread on abandoned tracks… and people have said some kind things about stuff I posted on track maintenance … so here is that stuff again with additions. Please note my information is UK based so some terms and practices might vary a bit. When it comes to the end appearance of the track the result should be much the same though.

Shawnee asked me about maintenance…

So this was my initial “generic” response…

[There will be new stuff in this post later on… look for “NEW STUFF–>” ]

Maintenance depends on -

  • original materials
  • replacement materials
  • revenue
  • weight of traffic
  • line speed
  • density/frequency of traffic
  • policy decisions
  • statutory requirements
  • compensation claims / risk
  • labour costs
  • plant costs
  • environment
  • drainage or lack of
  • local soil… may wash in or wash out from under.
  • plus…

Unless you are modelling a specific time and/or place you need to figure out what sort of recent history you want your line to have had … and where the Board think/hope they are going. This will depend on era and location. Sometime things like Nuclear power plants and/or military bases throw an element into the equation. Also some states have intervened to keep RR active and

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111 views and no-one’s told me that I’ve made a mistake yet… [%-)]

Is no-one reading this or have i stunned you into silence? [:O]

Hope I haven’t bored you to death. [8)]

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Great stuff…just trying to figure out how to emulate it all in Z scale…

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Very small? [%-)]

Apart from colour of ballast I hope to give you all rough guidelines on what MoW work may be going on to provide for small scenes to develop the RR atmosphere. This is a bit era specific - two eras… lots of bodies with muscle and lots of hydraulic rams built into machines with only a few operators (by comparrison).

[8D]

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Thanks for the info. The Old Dog wants to chew on this bone longer before making a reply.

Have fun

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Okay! [(-D]

The mistake that I realised I had made was that I forgot to say that when track needs slewing it has to have the ballast “opened out” for quite some length. If the ballast is doing its job and holding the track you can lean on your pry bars and levers as much as you like and it won’t go anywhere… it’s designed to stay in place with trains rolling over it - a few humans aren’t going to achieve much.

Therefore… if you have to free it up to shift it you also MUST slow the trains down with “Slow Orders” so that they don’t take the track out/fall off.

Hopefully Nick, Brakie or someone else will come in with some stuff on Slow Orders… I know there was a thread some time ago…?

For most models there won’t be length to flag a slow order so it is a matter of modelling the track with the ballast reduced around the ties and thrown out towards the end(s)… but not thrown far if it is going back in…

The great thing is that you now have a reason to run your trains slowly through the scene.

To give variation I would tend to make one direction speed reduced and keep the other normal.

You can do this with opposite direction main tracks or with a main and loop/second track. Which one you do is your choice.

If you feel that your trackwork needs upgrading this is a way to go while you keep things running.

You have a great advantage for modelling in the USA. While tracks may have directions or status designated you also frequently run “wrong road” … against the nominated flow/status. For the model this means that you can put a severe slow order on the westbound track or the main and t

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Changing out a rail.

This takes a bit more planning…

A rail may be almnost any length up to a half a mile or more (Ribbon Rail or CWR - Continuous Welded rail - factory welded lengths).

While there may be shorter gap fillers I will focus on 39’ lengths as that seems to be a US standard. We settgled on 60’ way back… but use 20’, 30’ and 40’ as something like standard. When cutting out a chunk of CWR to correct a fault we seem to regularly use 20’ and 30’ lengths to weld back in. These get shifted on the night by Road railer cranes and 20tonne trolleys.

Meanwhile, back at “ordinary track”.

  • You need to have stock bits of rail somewhere convenient. These may be stacked or spread around along the line at suitable spots… these days often at road access points where a truck can drop them off… going by rail is way too simple. [|(]
  • Rail being a touch heavier than a tie you need to be able to lift the thing and move it to site. In the “Good Old Days” this was done by hand… with trolleys if you were lucky. As above it can also be done with Burro cranes and similar. A burro on its own moving a rail will move slowly… there is a lot of weight hanging around.
  • (CWR is moved around on special trains… depending on era you unload it by anchoring a chain in the track, hooking it to a rail - or pair of rails - and pulling the train out from underneath it. It makes a bit of a bang if the train doesn’t stop in time for the last bit to be craned off. More modern CWR trains have unlading cars that can place the rail into the 4’ or to either side of the track they are on). All this means that you can have great long lengths of rail laying along the RoW waiting to go in or be broken up and lifted out.
  • Right - we’ve go
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Interesting material from a hands on view point.

The Old Dog is no expert on ROW maintenance, but here are some quick thougths.

Overhere, most routine maintenance is done in the summer if possible. Frozen ballest is hard to work with.

At least in earlier eras, railroads were diveded up into sections with one crew being responsible for the routine maintenance on each section.

Each section usually had a section house(shed) located near it’s center where the crew stored their handcar, tools, and supplies. In remote areas, there might also be a bunk house with a kitchen. For the modeler, such buildings could provide interesting scenes to model.

As for getting rails and ties to the work site, many lines did something like this. At the beginning to the season, each section foreman would submitt a list of the track supplies required. On a given day, the supplies would be loaded on a work train. At the beginning of each section, the foreman would board the train and indicate where the rails and ties should be left (dumped) by the side of the track as the train moved along. As the summer progressed, the section crew would move to each site and install the material that was already sitting besides the tracks. Hence, seeing new ties and rails sitting beside the track was common and might be a interesting scenic detail.

Another minor detail would be to be provide safty platforms for the handcar at certain intervals. These might be as simple as two ties spaced across the ditch where the hand car could be placed clear of the track when a train came.

Have fun

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Dave,Great topic…[tup]

I will also add there is yet another type of track…The worn out urban industrial branches that sees very little maintenance but,will see a urban local trod the branch on a daily bases.This track is usually has very little ballast,covered in dirt and has broken ties.

Also a heavy duty truck with a crane can be used in replacing a short piece of rail.The bad section is cut out and the short rail instaled…This is usually welded to the track it joins.The ballast is shoveled and then tamp by hand.

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Thanks for the kind words [8D]

As I said, I’m used to UK practice… which is pretty much all fairly hgh density / high speed mainline now. Even in the wilds of Scotland track is required to be kept up to a very high standard. Some of the US track I’ve seen pics of would have been signed out of use years ago here. I guess that you could say that pretty much all of our system is close to NE Corridor Standard. This is one reason our fares are so high [(-D]

I also suspect that I can’t appreciate just how much of your traffic is still one or two car loads. If it’s not a block train the Railway hasn’t wanted to know since Beeching in the 60s. Even a few completely regular block trains were pushed out onto the roads… the South Wales banana Trains with their specially built heated vans (boxcars) were one example.

It’s pretty amazing to me how many small (or now small) US lines still manage to deliver a car or two every now and then. …and not surprising the track isn’t highly maintained.

My thinking tends to stop at 1990 where I decided to stop my loco collecting (so that I would have some space left to live in) so I forgot those big trucks… I take it

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Now this sort of idea is the way to go… http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/1085899/ShowPost.aspx

The only real issues would be whether to glue the ballast down or not. [:-,]

Seriously…

A fairly large amount of track ballasting can be “run in” and much the same up to near the surface. If funds are short (when aren’t they?) I can see no problem with using a lower grade fill to top up between the ties and then using the ballast of one’s choice to top dress it and make it look good.

Switches are a special area… I posted in this thread.

http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/1075416/ShowPost.aspx

Don’t scream and run: I’m not suggesting ballasting all the track like this… BUT you can go to this level of attention for specific areas - such as where a tie or two has been changed.

If you really want to go crazy you could make a length look like a tamper had recently worked - there are usually four small depressions around each rail/tie + with a scatter of ballast on the ties. If new ballast has been dropped before the tamper run this will have begun to be worked in… For the modeller this would be a cross between mixing up an old ballast colour with a % of new and maybe sprinkling very small amounts as the final layer/part layer. This would be for those that really wanted to go to town on the job.

It would be much easier to just pour a strip of new material along on top of the old - including covering the ties - at either side, down the centre or any combination (depending on the doors fitted on the ballast car). Then again a back hoe riding on a car would tend to leave piles of ballast in blobs where the MoW men reckoned they needed them most.

What the MoW men really don’t want is a whole mass of ballast all the way along the side… this indicates that they a

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Ties are usually replaced before the surfacing (lining and tamping) is done. The tie gang goes out on the line with the tie cranes, pullers, inserters, etc. Then we run over it for a little while, break a few rails, dump some ballast, then the surfacing gang goes over it.

The rails are used to flexing, so when new ties are put in, less flexing can occur. The rail doesn’t take kindly to this, so it breaks. On jointed rail, it is fairly easy to cut in a new used piece of rail. The first time you go over it, you notice, because the rail isn’t shiny, it rides a little better, and the broken piece is set out to the side. On welded rail, many times a piece is cut to allow a standard 39-foot stick to be bolted in. Run trains, then the next day or two they get time to weld it in properly.

If enough ballast is dumped, the surfacing crew ends up raising the track. This is usually good, provides better drainage. Most of the track I run on hasn’t been maintained decent since the 1950s, so there is much work to do. The last rehab 10-25 years ago used limestone ballast. Not the best stuff. The new (crushed granite) ballast goes on top, raises things up a bit for better drainage. At road crossings, still have to come back to the existing level.

After the tamper goes through, usually the ballast regulator follows. They use the brooms to make the track look good, no ballast on top of the ties, the tamper holes get filled, shape the shoulders a little bit, etc. Usually do not see where the tamper was, unless in a yard sometimes. When tamping, it helps to have rock to tamp with. Tamping dirt makes things worse.

Panel track is popular when fixing derailments. Usually track condition caused the derailment, so fresh rail and ties replace rotted ties, and old broken 90 lb rail. If you are in luck, the surfacing gang is nearby and can make the afflicted area ride better than

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Hey WSOR3801! Great to have you help me out [:D]

Can we have some more please? You know US practice so your stuff is more relevant. [8D]

Any chance of some pics?

Track maintenance pics from anyone else as well please! [8D]

This looks good -

http://www.northeast.railfan.net/mow.html

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If I could get pictures to post here… I could show what tamped dirt looks like.[oops][:-^]

Some spots have artesian wells directly below the tracks. The ballast gets discolored, usually lighter, and it rides a bit bouncy.

Might also help to wander into the Trains mag forums. More 1:1 scale track dogs over there.[;)]

There is a book by Brian Solomon called Railway Maintainance. Shows machines in operation. The tamper pictures are real neat.

I don’t know that much about US practice. I just see what our guys do. The track has been neglected for quite some time, so sometimes it is like starting over. They usually do not have the funds to do things the right way, so they patch it up until the next time something breaks.

The welded rail is nice, though. No joints means less maintainance required. Rides better, too.