Welded Rail and Infrastructure Multi-Year Upgrades

[Luther Brefo]

A gang of about a dozen men were putting tie plates in position on Wed. AM north out of Avon.
Are we going to see big equipment for this change or is the equipment siiting in the siding in Avon it?

It was noted that tie plates have been place beside the west rail all the way to Brooks Road (MP 377.01ish).

It appears that all of the required equipment is on the premise.

[alsorailfan]

Monday the 2nd. A crew was loading up the 'boom' truck with 12 pallets of spikes at the Lakeville yard. One can of spikes weighs 100 lbs. 24 cans to a pallet (2400 lbs). 28,800lbs in all. They used a forklift to load/unload. So with the pickup truck with the crew foreman, the then 14 wheeler boom truck, and the pick up with the forklift on the trailer, a slow (35mph on rte 15...55mph zone)but steady pace, they went to Papermill Rd. where is was unloaded on both sides of the track next to the crossing. In Avon, saw the equipment going to be used for installing the CWR. Tuesday, most of the spike pallets were gone from the Lakeville yard. Stopped at Papermill rd when the LAL MOW(?) crew stopped and turned off the automated part of the crossing gate. After seeing a couple of friends, stopped in Avon and saw why they were turning off the automated gates, most of the CRW equipments were gone with the ballast sweeper getting ready to get on the mainline from the Kraft line. Saw more of the spike pallets lined up there. The crew foreman told me on Monday that they PLAN to start laying down the rail this coming Monday the 9th!!!
Sorry this is long winded, hope to get some pictures uploaded onto Picasa for posting here.

Chris

[alsorailfan]

Are the 2 dump trucks for picking up the used tieplates/spikes? Or for other uses?

[the1jp]

Alsorailfan:
The company doing the replacement may use the trucks for other uses but a couple of days ago I saw them loading the trucks with tie plates out of the gons that were sitting on one of the Avon sidings. The trucks then took them down the line to where they were spread out by a magnetic crane and by the guys walking the ballast.
It was really wierd to see that truck on the track.

The question I have is this. The other pallets of stuff by the mainline in Avon seem to be little pieces of wood! What are they used for?

[railwatcher]

Alsorailfan:


The question I have is this. The other pallets of stuff by the mainline in Avon seem to be little pieces of wood! What are they used for?

" If you can't get it true, shim it! " LMAO

Good question, 1jp!

[clearblock]

The question I have is this. The other pallets of stuff by the mainline in Avon seem to be little pieces of wood! What are they used for?

If the "little pieces of wood" are the shape of spikes with no head, they are tie plugs. These are used to fill the old spike holes in the ties.

If that is not what they look like, can you give a better description?

[alsorailfan]

Yep! That's what they are. There are pallets of them at Papermill Rd. Also there, there are 3 spike remover equipments, one rail alignment (?)--it has big wheels in the middle, 2 spiker-one looks pretty new in blue paint.
Question about the spike hole plugs, it is done manually? cut off flush with the tie manually? If so, very labor intensive work!

[clearblock]

Question about the spike hole plugs, it is done manually? cut off flush with the tie manually? If so, very labor intensive work!

It can be done manually or it can be automated.

The old fashioned way would be to drive the plug in with a maul and track punch that should seat it flush or to cut it flush with a track adze if necessary.

The plugs now may be inserted by a machine.

In some cases, a machine called a "Tie Adzer" will be used to prepare the tie surface where the tie plate will sit in which case it will take care of a protruding plug along with milling the adjacent tie surface.

I have not seen the equipment the LA&L's contractor is going to use to place the rail. Since it look like they are going to do the west rail first, I wonder if they are going to use swing booms with rail threaders to pull the old rail and set the new or if they have one of the more elaborate machines that does it in one operation and can do both tracks at once.

[alsorailfan]

The last picture, can anyone guess what the small equipments are? (spike hole pluggers??) They were sitting north of Tripphammer Rd. Also I'm assuming the equipment with the big 'wheels' is used to align the rails into gauge?? Have not seen any other equipment(s) that might do that. Hope you can enjoy the pictures!

http://picasaweb.google.com/alsorailfan ... nuo4xNpqtc

Chris

[H.F.Malone]

The "big wheel thing" is a machine for picking up scrap spikes, bolts, plates, etc. The scrap stuff falls into those removable bins just in front of the "chute" thing. Magnetisim may be involved in the operation of this rig.

[alsorailfan]

Thanks! That makes sense now going by the order of the equipments. Still leaves the question on how the rails are aligned.

[alsorailfan]

7-10-07 Now I see that they do only one rail at a time. Unfortunately there wasn't a place that they had reached where I could see the beginning and the whole process. Today I asked the foreman(?) how much they can lay down in a day and he said on a good day they can get about 7200 or so feet of rail down. Yesterday though, he said that they didn't do so well as too many of the guys were dropping from heat stroke ( and the foreman looked like he was about to drop and it was only 9 AM )

The last 5 pictures were taken today. I assume that the train can't run until both sides are in due to the difference in height??

http://picasaweb.google.com/alsorailfan ... _7NH8X_KD4

[the1jp]

Thanks for the info on the spike plugs.
I should have thought of it myself
Duh!!!

[wdburt1]

This kind of irresponsible speculation causes extra work and aggravation for real people doing their jobs on the real railroad.

FRA inspectors read this stuff and come hunting, all worked up, because they read this stuff. That's happened more than once, unfortunately.

Per the NORAC operating rules, "Normal speed" is the "maximum authorized speed" and is typically taken to mean "track speed, before slow orders."

The entire track project is under a 10 MPH slow order that will not increase until engineering personnel lift it segment by segment. Whoever told you that it was 30 MPH was either pulling your leg or was misunderstood. These things also happen from time to time. Prior to the project, LAL had no track operated at greater than 25 MPH.

WDB

William D. Burt
President and Chief Operating Officer
Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad
Lakeville, New York

[railwatcher]

GENTLEMEN, LET's BE CAREFUL IN WHAT IS BEING SAID! There is no need for speculation, when there is enough good things to talk about.

WDB, and LAL RR please accept the apologies of all.

Gregory Graves, Moderator