"Mean Kitty" Modern MOW Dyna-CAT 09-16

[Anonymous]

Guess no one likes my threads

Sad Toadie

[John Busby]

Hi TJ

Where I am your average track gang is 8 or 10 men a signals gang was 6 men this was for routine maintenance work they traveld in trucks you can guess which was the more mechanised gang

I have seen a picture of an old time ballast truck it was a 15ft 4wh low side open and the only fancy thing about it was the leather flaps to protect the axle bearings as the the track gang unloaded it with shovels or ballast forks.

Just a bit different from the modern RC ballast hoppers with little solar pannels at the top

A lot of S&C work was also done by rail with camp cars, stores vans, cable cars, mobile workshop and generator cars another car not often seen modeled is the water gin

The workers have to have something to make there coffee and cook with basicaly a big water tanker with drinking water only or similar on it, we also had them for loco water the design was slightly different but you cannot drink loco water.

I have never seen an S&C train done as a model only the line and signal maintainer and his mate with a 4wd fixing 1 broken telphone may be signal wire.

regards John Busby

[tangerine-jack]

The question of MOW was started on another thread, but I feel it's a great topic that is much misunderstood.  So with the caveat that I am not an expert, and that I want to learn as much as possible, I start this thread with my own humble knowledge of track repair and maintenance.

Old timey MOW (about pre 1955 give or take) is not automated and is very simple really.  There would have been a crane car obviously for lifting heavy loads such as rail sections, tie bundles etc.  There would have been one or more flat cars, gondolas or box cars for moving the ties, rails, spikes or ballast as required.  There would have been a cabin car for the work crew to sleep in, a kitchen car for meals, and a mobile office of some sort (modified caboose or perhaps a Pullman).  Since this type of MOW work is manual labor intensive, the equipment used is sparse, little more than hand tools really, but the people are not.  I've never seen an old MOW model scene that had the 30 or so workers required to do the job.

This of course is all dependent upon the type of work which is to be done.  Whether its tie and rail replacement, or just a smoothing job would determine the type and number of equipment used on the job site.  A good modeled scene would have bundles of ties and rails, a few converted cars, and lots of sweaty men with shovels and track bars.  Or perhaps a track car (hand pumper or maybe a goose) and five or six workers leveling a switch.  It can be large or small, it all depends.

Modern MOW is automated.  This is "Mean Kitty" a Plasser Dyna-CAT 09-16 (Dynamic Continuous Action Tamper) at Portage, Indiana.  It can smooth 3-5 miles of rail a day with only one operator as compared to a track gang of 30 working for a month to do the same thing in 1900.  The buggy underneath with the rollers is lifting and leveling the track (from a computer map) while the work head tamps the ballast to hold everything in place.  This machine can make a digital map of the entire track geometry including the position and orientation of every tie, then correct it to match a known standard. 

 

Before: Notice the roller coaster of track

 

During video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYAiuxSz5Nc

 

After: Ahh, smoooooth!