Welded rail train

[swinstandley]

A northbound rail train was in the NS Lexington, Ky. yard Friday afternoon.

[NSyorktown]

Examining that photo, the physics involved with modern railroading is amazing!

I count 9 rails on the top row, then 5 deep for 45 straight pieces of steel that, yes, will bend at extreme lengths but would also resist going around too sharp of curves (when there are that many pieces on top, versus the two anchored rails on the roadbed underneath the train).

So, the sides of a hundred or so flanges follow the existing right-of-way while the forces of the welded rail (x 45!) try to maintain a straight line.  Of course those rails are free-floating on the cars, allowing them to bend and twist as moved.  But the mechanical engineer who said this would work sure had a powerful calculator, and persuasive powers.

Cool pic, none-the-less.

[John Mark Crowder]

This train came in last wed with a bad order car.I believe it was axle number 11.Headed north they finally got it sided,and on Friday the R.J. Corman crew brought in two huge bulldozers to repair it.All these cars appear to be new,and I am wondering if the Corman bill will be passed down to the car manufacturer.I was not able to see them lift it off the track,but this had to be a hard procedure due to the continuous rail and not being able to separate the cars.A detector in burnside warned of a warm axle,and the detector in Wilmore finally got it as bad order.

[NSMoWandS]

Couple things... The car owner gets the bill. Happens all over the country all the time. The axles can be replace without lifting the car that high. A jack can be place under the couplers and lift the ends of two cars(one with bad wheel and the one it is coupled to). Slip the old wheel out, put new one in. As for CWR, it is quite bendy(only word I could think of). Only when making super tight curves(12 degrees plus) does a rail bender need to be used. It consists of three big wheels(two on one side, one on the other side of rail) that the rail is fed through to shape it to the right degree. As, for flanges... here's some math for you... If the top of the railhead profile was 100% correct, the track was perfectly level and in spec, and all rail wheels(which taper towards their ends for going around curves w/o a differential) were perfectly aligned and in spec... rail wheels would NOT even need flanges. The rail head and wheels would work together to keep the car on the rails even in curves. But, we do not live in a perfect world... so, we get flanges! LOL! Just some food for thought. DE Dan

[E.M. Bell]

Back at the LXOH startup in 96, I handled a loaded rail train with NS power over our new RR (part of the acquisition  deal from NS is that we got new 100RE to replace the old 65RE that was on the branch)...and I can tell you that it is NOT easy to rerail a set of trucks on one.....but we got to practice several times that week.  I was never so glad to give something back to the NS in my life as the day we took that empty sucker back to the yard in Lexington! 

In retrospect, I guess that rail train helped me to really learn that line. Nothing like trying to creep down a 3% grade wrapped around S curves trying to keep a constant speed unloading rail..