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Old 02-23-2014, 02:44 PM
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Panther Al Panther Al is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stg58fal View Post
I guess it must depend on the location and possibly RR, because in five different states the places I generally see concrete ties are on curves. Concrete come with their own set of problems as far as maintenance goes, and they cost a lot more than wood. They're a pain to replace or change the hardware out on, compared to wood. I friggin hate concrete ties.

The condition of the rails themselves isnt the only concern I'd have. I prob should have gone more into detail, but I kinda got caught up playing World of Tanks.

Without maintenance crews, the natural cycles of hot and cold are going to play merry hell on the lines. Especially hot. Welded rail isn't immune to that, either. You're right in that sending a vehicle to check gauge ahead of the train would most likely work, esp if you've got nothing against moving your cargo slowly. It'd suck to hit a spot where the heat made the track all wonky, doing it's best impersonation of a sidewinder snake, at 55 mph when you're hauling a couple hundred thousand tons of coal. Or, you know, ANYTHING for that matter.

After seeing what a week of 95-105 degree temps can do with rail (it's fun to cut when it's 105 degrees out), I hate to imagine what several years without maintenance would result in.

After a winter or two with no maintenance, I'd definitely be sending someone who knew what they were about ahead of any traffic on jointed rail. But I really dislike jointed rail. So that could be my personal opinion creeping in.

Also, the welded vs jointed is greatly dependent on the RR. I've seen one that has jointed (I'm pretty sure 115 lb) rail on their mains. And not some "corn field to grain silo" RR, either, they've got track through about half of one of the biggest states in the US. 'Course, they seem to exist more as a tax write-off for a certain mining billionaire more than anything else, so it doesn't surprise me that their track is....eh....."unsat" (In my opinion, of course).

I'm not a pro on railroads - my knowledge comes from modelling them - but I think these days Jointed is just a bad thing altogether. It was different back in the day (Up until, oh, the 50's perhaps) when the railroads could hire swarms of crew to make sure the lines was as in good a shape as you could possibly get from what I understand - I've seen period pics of double tracked mainlines where even the ballast was trimmed up in a neat perfectly straight line by crews as part of their job.

But speaking of ballast: this is what I think would doom most tracks without steady maintenance. Lack of traffic will help in keeping it together, sure, but weather is gonna do number on it - especially with washouts.

For example:

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