Ice Woe's

[Anonymous]

Have a major problem with ice lifting the rails from the roadbed during the winter. Would love to run all year,Any advice?

[bman36]

Hi there,
See this is your first post. Welcome! Have a few questions for you. Could you give us a few more details? What is your roadbed made from? If you could give us a specific overview of what your track is sitting on this would help. Also how is the ice forming? Is it from freezing rain? Is it from snow melting during the day and freezing at night? Perhaps the ground is heaving? Look forward to helping out. Later eh...Brian.

[vsmith]

QUOTE: Originally posted by HobokenEd

Have a major problem with ice lifting the rails from the roadbed during the winter. Would love to run all year,Any advice?

Move?

Welcome, Seriously though if you have ice heave, I assume, that bad it might be time to rebuild with elevated track using posts sunk down far enough to be below the freeze level. and wood beam stringers for the tracks to be attached to, OLD DAD on this forum has some great info on whats called a spline (?) system that looks like it would be a good chioice if you decide to use posts. If its not heave but water laying on the ground and freezing then its definitly time to rebuild and raise the roadbed level well above the water level. This advice is based on some british layouts I found while researching my own layout. The Brits recommend using reinforced concrete for the posts then bolting wood posts to the sides of the concrete. this allows for some flexability with the layout. and a rot proof base for the layout. Sounds a bit much, but this may be the only way to prevent serious heaving problems.

Be advised my advice is strickly based on what I could find via research, before I started my RR I did a lot of research, I'm passing on some of the information i found, but as I live in sunny California the only ice problems we have is when someone spills a drink on the tracks, you really need to hear from those of us out there in the frozen north that have delt with this problem and may have better solutions. Good Luck!

[Anonymous]

HobokenEd:
You might not have proper drainage away from your roadbed. If water is pooling up under your track it will expand when it freezes and cause your track to heave up or twist. I don't think there is anything you can do about it right now, you will have to wait for the spring and retrench under you track. Probably not a fun thought. I have extremely good drainage under my track and haven't encountered any type of heaving in the two years my track has been down. Good Luck in fixing your problem.
Peter