Railroad tie

“ When chairs are used, the largest ties shall be selected for the joints. When the joint is made by fishing, there will be no tie directly under the joint.
RAILS. The rails will weigh about sixty pounds per lineal yard. No rail shall be laid on the tangents which is in any way twisted or bent. It shall be the duty of the first party to correct and make true any crooked rails received by him, also to bend to the proper curve, and in such a manner as not to affect the strength of the bar, all rails laid in curves. Punching of rails, and cutting, will also be done by the contractor. ”

“ Some years age it was discovered that there was a strip of road in the track of the Union Pacific Railroad, in Wyoming Territory, about ten miles in length, where the ties do not decay at all. The Chief Engineer, Mr. Blinkinsderfer, kindly took up a cotton wood tie in 1882, which had been laid in 1868, and sent a, piece of it to the committee. It is as sound and a good deal harder than when first laid, 14 years before, while on some other parts of the road cottonwood ties perish in two or five years. ”

“ Steel rails are not riveted to railroad ties but the spikes are driven close to each rail so that the heads hook over the edge and hold the rail down without absolutely preventing its movement forward and backward. ”

“ The Pennsylvania railroad is experimenting with steel ties, weighing thirteen to a ton, and costing $2 each, but their inflexibility seriously increases the [Pg 471] wear and tear of rails and cars, and it is feared that the experiment will prove a failure. When the Boston and Lowell railroad was built I feel quite sure that stone ties were used, and finally abandoned for the reason above suggested. ”

“ The bars of the trans-continental railroad had careened the horizon with their mighty leverage, and let the cargo through—the very cargo for which they waited in the old days with their faces toward the rising sun, like a praying Israelite. The locomotive had wheeled the rolling globe a half revolution, brought the tide of commerce to the right-about, like a soldier upon his heel. It has proved to be anything but what it was suspected of being—the locomotive has—for, made to be a common carrier, a gigantic, quicktime dray-horse, it is a civilizer, a builder of cities ”

“ Engine the 107 was not rebuilt for a long time and was never again employed in passenger service. The foreman in one of the repair shops wrote to Philadelphia and learned that the 109 was completed on Thursday and the 107 on Friday. As I said a while ago, railroad employees are not superstitious,—they will all tell you so,—much less railway officers; but it is a fact to-day that a new locomotive or a locomotive that has been rebuilt is never taken out on the Denver and Rio Grande on Friday. ”

“ The writer has had long mileages of each description of permanent way under his charge, both at home and abroad, for many years, and the result of his experience has shown that, although a fairly good road may be made with flange rails, still, for constant, heavy, fast traffic, the bull-head rail with cast-iron chairs makes a much stronger, more durable, and better permanent way than any flange railroad. ”

“ At the present day we can order any equipment which may best meet the requirement upon any railroad, and the order will be promptly met by any one of our great manufactories. But in the early days of the Western Railroad it was far otherwise, and the locomotive which should successfully and economically operate the hitherto unheard of grade of over 80 feet to the mile was yet to be seen. ”

“ The driving-wheels are an important detail of the [Pg 130] construction of the locomotive. They are made in rough castings—of steel for fast passenger engines, and of iron for other forms of motive power—and are then made true in giant lathes. The steel tires are shrunk on the wheels, a work of astounding nicety; and in turn the wheels themselves are heated and shrunk upon the axles—of the best steel that man can forge. To place these wheels upon the axles is hair-line work. A 9-inch hub receives an axle just 8.973 inches—no more, no less—in diameter. ”

“ Back door influences had everywhere to be encountered. The North Western, for instance, is the most important of the railway companies of the United Kingdom. The locomotive superintendent of that company was the part inventor and proprietor of an emergency brake which had been extensively adopted by it on its rolling stock, but which wholly failed to meet the requirements [224] laid down in its circular by the Board of Trade. ”

“ The famous pioneer train of August 9, 1831, over the Mohawk Valley road was literally made up in this way, the bodies of stage coaches having been placed on trucks, which "were coupled together with chains or chain-links, leaving from two to three feet slack, and when the locomotive started it took up the slack by jerks, with sufficient force to jerk the passengers, who sat on seats across the tops of the coaches, out from under their hats, and in stopping they came together with such force as to send them flying from their seats." ”

“ Additional curved blocks corresponding to the unit block in width and thickness are a great boon to engineers, for what is a railroad without curves!
Transportation toys can be perfectly satisfactory when not made strictly to scale. Indeed, the exigencies of the situation generally demand that realists be satisfied with rather wide departures from the general rule. Train service, however, should accommodate at least one passenger to a car. ”

“ One of these measures is to plant trees, but the one most commonly sought is to treat the ties used by some of the various methods for preventing or rather for delaying the natural decay. Another resort for prolonging the life of ties is to use tie plates, which are plates of iron inserted between the top of the tie and the bottom of the rail so as to distribute the load over a larger area and thus reduce the tendency of the rail to cut into the top of the tie. ”

“ A steel man is authority for the statement that one cold winter day in 1913, a single locomotive, making excessive speed, broke about a hundred rails in the distance of a mile on one of the leading railroad systems.
Both steel and railroad men were, therefore, much interested in the announcement made by the New York Central Railroad, in August, 1916, to the effect that the road’s staff of specialists had discovered the cause and remedy for the hidden flaws in steel rails. ”

“ It appears from the evidence that railroad locomotive wheels are composed of two parts,-the body of the wheel, called the wheel-centre, and a tire which surrounds it, substantially in the same manner in which the tire surrounds the felloes of an ordinary wagon wheel. ”

“ Timber sleepers intended for the flange railroad should have the rail-seats grooved by machinery to ensure perfect accuracy in the position of the grooves, and in the angle or inclination of the rail-seats. Fig. 340 is a side view of part of a sleeper grooved to receive a flange rail. The presence of the grooves materially facilitate the laying of the rails to gauge, but must not be allowed to interfere with the constant use of the platelayer’s gauge. ”

“ The third division is the Junction shops, where the new locomotives are built; 1,800 men are employed within it, and there men take the new castings and forgings (most of the castings coming up from the giant foundries that we have just noticed) , and from them they create that almost human thing, the railroad locomotive. When the [Pg 396] locomotive emerges from that shop it takes its turn upon the testing-table, the mechanical experts place their final stamp of approval upon it, and at last it goes out from the shop, under its own steam, to perform the great work for which it was created. ”

“ The reason that ordinary railway tracks are an obstruction to common travelling-carriages is, that it is necessary that the rails should be raised above the surface of the ground, because railroad wheels are constructed differently from ordinary wheels in having two circumferences of different diameters, the smaller circumference being intended to rest on the rail (and called the tread) , and the larger circumference running on the side of the rail. ”

“ Then (p. 054) comes the main body of the army, placing the ties, laying the track, spiking down the rails, perfecting the alignment, ballasting and dressing up and completing the road for immediate use. Along the line of the completed road are construction trains pushing 'to the front' with supplies. The advance limit of the rails is occupied by a train of long box-cars with bunks built within them, in which the men sleep at night and take their meals. Close behind this train come train loads of ties, rails, spikes, etc., which are thrown off to the side. ”

“ This new equipment is being used at first upon the main lines and through trains, where both speed and density of traffic demand the railroad’s best equipment. Gradually it will be spread to the trains and branch lines of less importance.
With the wooden car still a factor in railroad equipment, the carpenter has not yet lost his vocation in the shops. There is much of the coarser work on the freight cars for him; in the elaborate passenger coaches, dining-cars and other equipment of that class, the great mass of cabinet work still demands the cunning of his hands. ”

“ We have been donating millions of acres of land to new railroads. It is important that the tracks should be laid with steel rails, that the companies should get the rails as cheaply as they can; it is equally as important that the old roads, when repaired, should be repaired with steel rails. This is the only mode by which the railroads can ultimately become laid with these rails. It is estimated that a railroad needs a renewal of the rails once in ten years. ”

“ Rail joints are defined as suspended when the opening between the rail ends comes over the space between the adjacent ties, and as supported joints when this opening comes over the centre of a tie. Suspended joints are by far the most common in the United States. Rails are said to be laid with square joints when the joints of the two lines of rails are opposite each other, and they are said to be laid with broken joints when the joints in one line of rails come opposite the centre portion of the rails in the other line. Broken joints are the more common in the United States. ”

“ Its boiler is no longer shiny. On the average American railroad, locomotive upkeep has become an all but forgotten art. The names and the individuality have gone from its engines. They are assigned to crews out of the roundhouses in a very systematic and utterly unsentimental way. Yet something very definite has been lost.
You could scarce expect a modern railroad president whose system may own three or four thousand locomotives to know any considerable number of the men who operate them. ”

“ The railroad will probably build the greater part of its freight equipment, although in these days of the supplanting of wood by steel in car-construction the companies are apt to stand appalled at the cost of the steel working machinery, and to buy their cars direct from the manufacturers very much as they purchase their locomotives. Passenger equipment is almost invariably secured in this way. It is a big railroad indeed that seeks to construct for itself the huge travelling palaces that the passenger of to-day has come to demand for his comfort. ”

“ To secure perfect safety in ascending and descending such a tremendous grade, the track is composed of three rails bolted to a trestle of heavy timbers, the centre rail being an immense wrought-iron ladder, with rounds four inches apart, into which the cogs of the locomotive drive-wheel fit, and thus drag the train up the steep as well as control it, with aid of air-brakes, in making the descent. One and a half hours are consumed in making the round trip, and the fare is six dollars, but the view from the summit is so magnificent that it fully justifies the expense. ”

“ The wheels will, undoubtedly, be as safely guided in the shallow as in the deeper channels, and the rails will be equally durable with those of greater weight. When rails of this description are sunk into a channel in a rail of stone or wood, the base being wider than their upper sides, the pressure of sand into the seams on each side of the iron, caused by the running of common carriage wheels over them, will effectually confine the iron plates between the jambs of the stone or wood. ”

“ Rails must be made more uniform in quality, and must be free from the imputation of fracture under regular wear. Notwithstanding the great improvements made in the preparation of the steel, and in the rolling, there are still far too many steel rails which break under traffic to allow rail-makers to rest satisfied with their work. Something is still wanting in the manufacture to effectually remove this disposition to fracture. The safe rail, the rail of the future, must be one that may bend and may wear, but will never break under ordinary use in the road. ”

“ The railroad in its modern form would be impossible if Bessemer and others had not taught the world to make steel cheaply. Iron rails, even under comparatively light loads, wore out and had to be replaced constantly. Steel rails, introduced gradually after 1860, could bear double the load on each wheel, and still outlive many iron rails. The modern rail, simple as it appears, is both in material and in proportions a great feat of engineering, “a beam whose every dimension and curve and angle are exactly suited to the tremendous work it has to do.” ”

“ Steel rails, by their superior hardness, strength, and stiffness, approach much nearer than iron to the mathematical planes to which all rails should conform, in order to diminish the resistance to traction to a minimum. Taking the working expenses of railways at their present average rate, it would be a low estimate indeed to say that, even apart from all consideration of the renewals of rails, the superiority of steel over iron rails does not amount to at least 2d. per train mile, taking into account the saving of locomotive power, wear of carriage and waggon stock, maintenance of way, &c. ”