I am spending the weekend/week in Tampa, FL on business for UTC. There is a street car next to my hotel, which raises a question I always wondered about.
I am not an expert in telling rail weight, but I can tell smaller rail from big, and have a fair percentage of saying that is 115 lb. rail, that is 90 lb and that is 136, etc. The rail head for the Tampa street car looks fairly heavy. In fact, there is a CSX daimond that it intersects right near my hotel. The street car rail weight is heavier than the CSX freight line rail.
This seems to be common for me. The Washington D.C. Metra rail has to be a pretty high rail weight, as does some of the St. Louis Metra line that I have seen. The Chicago L has sections with fairly high rail weight.
Why do street car lines use such heavy weight rail? Surely, they could get by on half of what freight lines use, yet more often than not, I see them with heavier weights than that of freight lines.
Girder rail for embedding in pavement is generally rolled in weights ranging from about 100-105# to about 125#.
The lightest modern trolley line rail I think I’ve seen that’s conventional tee rail is about 90#. The heavier stuff is generally easier to get and usually maintains alignment better than the lighter stuff. When we did that work, I think we spec’ed about 110# min. RE profile. The common running rail today is 115# RE, primarily because it is easy to get, has a standard head profile, and has an adequate cross section to handle return currents associated with LRT.
For more info than you probably EVER wished to obtain, go to the following TRB website and download all four parts of the LRT Design manual. It’s free:
(1) They do not roll 90# rail anymore. 115# rail is usually the smallest you find new in quantity. (If you want FTA $$$, then you buy new rail - Colorado Springs wants to USE 90# AR-B rail that is secondhand, but almost was never used out of the Denver****nal. They are privately funded and then there is the CWR issues with smaller used rail.)
(2) Russian 132# rail has been dumped in the US in recent history.
(3) Smallest crane rail (complete with flangeway for street running) on the market anymore is 135/171/175#…the 104/105# stuff is hard to find and almost all secondhand)
Correct. The 90# was relay rail and was several years ago, and not using FTA $$$. I have found some 103# girder lately in various quantities, but I figured I’s pass along the smallest I’ve seen. The 110# we spec’ed was also on a locally funded project, and we found a bunch at the time that was like new.
I know you are aware of this, but for the casual onlookers, FTA $$$ usually cost more than they bring in, after everything is added up. But the attraction to pols is almost hypnotic (you are getting sleepy, sleepy, sleepy, you want federal dollars, you need federal dollars, you can’t live without federal dollars, when I snap my fingers you’ll wake up with dollars–put them in the freezer…) Local bonding (if available) can generally beat the feds, and is essential if you are on a fast track (bad pun).
I’m sure that the mudchicken and his colleagues will correct me if necessary, but I am familiar with cases where heavier than necessary rail and other accouterments were used to lengthen the time between maintenance windows, e.g. the tracks will hold up better. When the Rock Island Suburban line was rebuilt from the ground up by the RTA, it was up to 60 MPH standards, even though operation at that speed was impossible for other reasons.
Awww, now thats not fair, he was just saving up for the next hurricane relief fund, and couldn’t find any safer place than his freezer…dosent everyone keep emergency cash on hand in their icebox?
[:D]Ed
When Portland, Ore. was building its city circulator line linking downtown with the oh-so-fashionable arts district and the chic, trendy, fashionably hip and liberal Northwest Nob Hill neighborhood I was amazed at the size of the channel rail being installed. That rail and many of the frog and diamond crossings associated with it I could swear was bigger than anything I’ve seen along The Overland Route mainline. Most of the stuff came from Austria as well.
Recently I discovered that a remaining segment of the Pacific Electric Railway Eastern Division still has 75-lb. steel rail rolled in 1912 in place. This line crosses Riverside Ave. in downtown Rialto, Calif. An active lumber yard located just a little ways west of downtown appears to be the only customer. The trolley wire, of course, is gone, but many of the heavy bond wires that span rail joints are still in place. Today Union Pacific switches this line.
I see a CSX freight go by over a diamond with cars heavy enough not to be suitable on most short lines, and it crosses a diamond with track larger than that on the overland route.
Things that make you say hmm . . .
Not that I haven’t learned a lot about the explanations given thus far. Thanks,
Portland streetcar clearly spent more money than they needed to on their track structure. But they did not do a lot of research or orginal thinking (as New Orleans clearly did for Canal Street, including their modern technology, handicapped accessable version of a 1926 Pearly Thomas streetcar). What Portland clearly did is to go by the book on what is standard practice for German-Austrian-Dutch-Belgian-Czeck standard practice new in-twon tram lines. Remember that street trackage not only takes the weight of the streetcars/trams, but also heavy trucks and even construction equipment that might drive down the street! I happen to think the New Orleans approach is the best for street trackage.
Very interesting conversation regarding street trackage for street cars…One question that has always been with me: With the size {weight}, rail in discussion, I have trouble understanding how the rail is shaped to make the sharp 90 degree turns at intersections. Don’t understand how a consistent radius curve is formed without the rail kinking, etc…And…What force is used {on site}, to make such bends…?
(1) QM - 3-point rail rollers and heat for those tight curves
(2) Gabe:Depth of paving may justify the 175#CR which is tall stuff (6" tall with a 4" ball width) or 114#GR (7.5 " tall with the telltale channel width on top pushing 5 inches [ball + channel])…the 133# rail on UP’s transcon comes in at 7 1/16" high, 136 &140# rail is 7 5/16" tall)
And at crossing frogs (weakest part of track struckture) you want the most massive steel you can find to protect the massive impact damage on the weakest part of the track structure)
(3) All: The only place you want asphalt is under the ballast as subgrade structural support. Asphalt paving up against the rail is a recipe for trouble (it will NEVER stay flush, grinding may damage the railhead), this is why you see gage side and field side rubber rail boots / interfaces. This also is why you try to keep rail transit separate from rubber tired vehicles along with multiple other stupid-factor reasons.
And pouring concrete up against rail is an even dumber idea, even though the so called transportation engineers (The same people infatuated with traffic circles) keep advocating the concept.
Mudchicken…Thanks…I am assuming then they had such machines back when transit was common in many cities in the early 20th century as these systems were constructed.
City of Johnstown, Pa., close my home area {Johnstown Traction Co.}, had tracks all over the metropolitan valley and making those sharp turns all over the city has had me wondering about that subject for years.
The grossly oversized rail being adopted by newly-built or rebuilt streetcar lines ties-in with a bad historical practice and something I observed about 25-years ago.
I suspect that most of the first generation of streetcar and interurban lines were significantly undercapitalized and one of the one many places where they did things on-the-cheap was rail. The entrepreneurs who built these lines probably used the lowest weight rail they could get away with, and maybe they figured that with traffic growth they might be able to afford a better and more substantial track structure later. Well as we all know, Walter Chrysler, Henry Ford, and Alfred Sloan came along and changed American transportation habits, much to the detriment of the electric traction industry.
For those lines that survived a shrinking traffic base, the Great Depression, and World War 2, by the time 1946 rolled-around the physical plant was shot and there was no money in the till to fix the track.
Fast forward now to 1980. I was visiting my old residential neighborhood in the Mission District of San Francisco whereupon I came across the rebuilding underway of the J-Church streetcar line. The rail being pulled out was so thin, corroded, and worn, I swear to God a 6-year old could have used that iron as a toothpick. As for the crossties, they looked so pathetic that I bet the track kept gauge only out of force-of-habit!
As I recall, the San Francisco Municipal Railway was replacing what appeared to be the original track structure with concrete ties and the heaviest rail I’d ever seen being laid in North America. Sure, it was overkill and the up-front costs of that rehabilitation project must have been enormous, but I bet the track structure (barring any catastrophic earthquakes) will last a hundred years, or more.
I suppose it’s no wonder then that Portland, Ore. adopted elements of the San Francisco experience as well as the Austrian, Belgian, Czech, Danish, and German practi
Toronto used to assemble specialwork and intersections in their shops before putting it out in the street. I have a print on my wall showing the relaying of the most complicated intersection, and every piece of rail is coded and described on the web.
I watched a loop being worked on at our streetcar museum and they were using a hand tool with a long bar and bits the fitted on both sides of the rail.
G’day, Y’all,
Will Mullett, the GM of the New Orleans RTA, told me last year that the street cars in New Orleans have been running on 115 pound rail - the same rail - since before 1900. The 5-foot gage trolleys weigh 46,000 lbs for the heritage cars and 49,000 lbs. for the reproductions which have to have a bunch of federally mandated stuff on them. Will said the ancient 115-lb rail gave his trains a great margin of safety.
Modern light rail uses consultants who make more money for spending more money and also insurance companies require pretty much the safest thing possible. Here in Atlanta our 106,000 lb. cars MARTA rail use stuff way heavier than the adjacent Norfolk Southern for cars that weigh about 260,000 lbs.
If a railroad was putting in a trolley car system, they’d use much lighter rail, I bet, even if they had to get it made specially.
Incidentally, the recent Trains article about track showed a derailment of (I think) 260,000 lb cars which were on 90 lb. rail. But I bet for some time, that very old rail held the big cars and locomotives up. Such lightweight rail would have no trouble at all with 44 passenger trolleys weighing a total of about 56,000 lbs. including passengers.
I think Will needs to check his records then. I lived in the New Orleans area from 1989 to 1994 and I remember the ST. Charles line roadway being completely redone from a fabric membrane on the bottom to new rail on top, tho I don’t remember the weight. The Times-Picayune did a story on it and showed the cross section of the entire roadway. It should still be accessable in their archives.