dknelsonI guess my takeaway is that for dedicated service cars and unit train cars RIP tracks might sometimes be placed nearer or at the customer.
I saw the same situation at the Pennsylvania Railroad ore docks in Cleveland, Ohio, where the Hulett unloaders once churned out tons of taconite and iron ore and loaded it into the endless stream of trains to the Steel Centers.
There was a baloon track loop along with the four tracks under the loaders. Toward the "neck" of the loop there was a two story yard office and two tracks used as repair tracks for the ore jennies and hopper cars that were bad-ordered.
Made sense to have a repair facility where the greatest concentration of cars were.
Good Luck, Ed
caldreamer a RIP track is usually located in a yard, where minor repairs will be made. For example change a wheel set out, etc. The repair does no require the car to go into the shop as it is a minopr repair. Caldreaqmer
a RIP track is usually located in a yard, where minor repairs will be made. For example change a wheel set out, etc. The repair does no require the car to go into the shop as it is a minopr repair.
Caldreaqmer
Agreed. But I recall that there was a RIP track near a coal burning electric plant that got 100+ car unit trains of coal. The RIP track itself was a few miles north near an old depot that was no longer in service but sidings were still in place. A company (railroad company that is) truck and crew would drive up now and then and repair whatever lightly damaged cars had been placed there. This got the cars back to the utility much faster (since the empties were also a unit train, this avoided having to move isolated empties in manifest freights). It may have been the nearest siding that was on railroad, not utility company, property that had ready access to trucks. I cannot recall if I ever saw cars there that were not coal hoppers/gons with rotary couplers on one end but there might have been. Those trucks probably had the equipment to support light welding.
More seriously damaged cars from that utility were taken to a railroad owned car repair shop a few miles north of that. Both that siding and the car repair shop were many miles south of the RIP track at the nearest C&NW yard (Butler Yd.).
I guess my takeaway is that for dedicated service cars and unit train cars RIP tracks might sometimes be placed nearer or at the customer.
Dave Nelson
When I worked on PRR and later Chessie(C&O) those was called storage tracks simply because MOW cars could be placed there for the MOW crew, cars placed in storage until needed and cars removed from general service could be spotted there until dispose of.
We would make minor repairs like low couplers,broken air hose and broken knuckles.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
On the Southern Pacific, these tracks were referred to as bad order setout, or hotbox tracks. One stub-ended track was located off of each passing siding and, passing sidings on the Sunset Route west of San Antonio were roughly ten miles apart. The original purpose was to provide a place to set out bad ordered equipment, including locomotives but, they also provided locations for basing maintenance operations as well, being six to 15 or so cars in length. They were oriented facing point in one direction or the other.
It gives me an excuse to put a stub siding where I wouldn't have previously considered having one.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Where are the RIP tracks? Id guess in grave yard next to the RIP grave stones. Sorry couldnt resist.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
Its more of a nonclementure issue.
The railroads I am familiar with would call that track a "set out" track. Its used for trains to set out a bad order if something goes wrong on a train running across the railroad. Often they will be near a defect detector to give train that have a defect detected a place to setout a car. They are also used by MofW to tie up a tamper or inspection car. Once a bad order is set out, a "wheel truck", a truck with carmen on it and tools to repair cars would go out and fix the car or at least make it safe to move. So from that perspective its a RIP track, but its not a RIP track in the normal useof the term.
Normally when a railroad refers to a RIP track its a railroad facility at a yard where the yard switches bad order cars for repairs.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Just a short stub-end siding. Maybe there is a detector close by, and this track is used for bad order cars that the detector catches, instaed of dragging them to a yard farther away, or plugging up a passing siding.
CN has something like this near me, little burg named Honey Creek. Same situation, short stub end siding.
Sometimes MOW equipment is parked there over night, some times gravel jennys, as there is a huge pit real close by, and sometimes, a bad order car, that a detector, which is lesses than 1/2 mile away, picks up.
I've seen an auto rack park there occasionally, and a box car, and even a flat with a covered load sitting there.
Mike.
EDIT: Nittany posted while I typed.
My You Tube
Ah! I thought it looked familiar!
That's near Ryde PA, on the Pittsburgh Line. The river sure did look like the Juniata. There's a covered hopper spotted there on Google Maps. You could trace the line in either way to see if you can find anything else between Altoona and Harrisburg.
Somewhere in my files, I have a track chart for the Bessemer and Lake Erie dating to the 1960s Out on the main, miles from any yard, there are scattered stub end tracks labeled as RIP tracks. They're spread out more or less about ever 15 miles.
I do suspect that the somewhat unique traffic pattern on that road may have lent itself to a more rigid pattern.
The guy who posted the drone video says the coal hopper is on a RIP track. I believe it is somewhere in Pennsylvania or Ohio.
Not having any real railroading experience, I did not imagine these would be located out in the middle of farm country but near a yard or tower. I suppose if a car isn't fit to get to the nearest yard, then you need to put it somewhere. How far apart are RIP tracks located?
Behind the camera, the rest of the train is crossing a bridge over a river.