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QUOTE: Originally posted by ValleyX The good side of posting to these boards is where it leads to, one can learn from them or one can sort through the flam looking for a morsel of valuable information. We get to have plenty of discussions with people that we would otherwise never share with and most likely, will never meet face to face. The bad side is that we can sit and read these and tend to read into them more than was meant by the poster or less than was meant by the poster. We each have our own way of looking at things and interpeting things. Goodness was meant as an exclamation but not in an insulting sort of way. Guess I'll have to be more careful but I don't really buy into political correctness very well, don't think one should go about purposely insulting others but it's gone overboard. Howeve, I also know it's a requirement of present-day life if one carries on relationships with others in any form, also required for employment at most places, one must hold ones' tongue. Enough of that, back to railroading.
QUOTE: Originally posted by ValleyX Wasn't trying to pick a fight, I was only trying to say what I believe to be true, unless that's a plug, I don't believe that piece of rail has been lying in that spot since 1940. I know that NS, CSX, and Conrail all took up mainlines and put them someplace else, signals too, for that matter. And for all I know, all that rail was used for passing tracks somewhere and yard tracks but I've read otherwise, wish I could cite that for verification. And I know that the welded rail on the mainlines wasn't all welded together in place. This is a heavily trafficked mainline, was a mainline on the Wabash, a mainline on the N&W, and probably has seen more trains in the last five years since the Conrail acquisition than ever before. It was never a secondary main. I've learned more about rail and its pedigree today than I've ever known, I was working from memory and years of riding across the stuff, some of the very rail under discussion.
QUOTE: Originally posted by jeaton AntiGates-We don't disagree on everything. heh,heh.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
QUOTE: Originally posted by mudchicken Whoa folks: (1) ValleyX, the proper term for using rail over and over at different locations and also turning int second hand CWR is "cascading"....Railroads do it commonly, but some rail with too much tonnage and wear goes straight to the scrapper - especially rail from mountain territory. (Some of that "Bethlehem" rail in the Tehachapis from the early 1990's went straight to the scrapper in less than 5 years because it was an unaceptable liability, and rightly so....) (2) OH rail is not necessarilly bad, but past history shows that OH rail consistently failed (as in rail breaks and detector car defects found) faster than CC, VT (Vacuum Treated) or other methods between the hearth and the rolling mill. Service hardened OH rail is still out there in mainline service, but it is rare and getting rarer. Sounds like the main line this thing is in doesn't have that high a traffic density or tonnage expectation. (As in almost never sees a grail grinder)... OH rail will serve just fine in a yard for many years, CWR or jointed. Railroads have human foibles just like the rest of the world. If there is the remains of a boutet weld on either side of that OH rail and it was used as a "plug" to relace a piece of broken rail and the OH was all there was for replacement at the time, oh well. If the OH got by the the inspectors at the rail plant and was flashbutt welded into the CWR string (less visible weld marks than a boutet weld), then it's uh-oh time. There is an art and a science to railroad engineering - You can't always look at things in absolutes. (News Flash: It's an imperfect world, bad things still unpredictably happen. You just try to minimize the risks where you can.) Watch, learn & enjoy! No need to pick fights. [;)][;)][;)]
QUOTE: Originally posted by ValleyX Goodness, I should have expanded and given the entire explanation, there's really no mystery. There's no doubt that you're seeing what you're seeing but that rail could have come from anywhere. That isn't the original rail that was laid THERE in 1940. When these railroads abandon lines, take up track and replace it with welded rail, or replace old rail with new, they weld it up and take it someplace else. N&W and Southern have abandoned a lot of railroad that had perfectly good rail, I recall seeing entire rail trains with trees and weeds growing up in it when they ripped up most of the Cloverleaf between Frankfort, IN, and St. Louis, rail that was bound for the welding plant in Atlanta. Somewhere, that rail is an NS mainline today. I would imagine that a lot of the old Maumee District west of Toledo and Gary District between Montpelier, OH, and Chicago are somewhere else today, too.
QUOTE: Originally posted by ValleyX But they didn't. I've never seen NS or N&W do that and not to be smart about it, I've been employed by them for 30 odd years, I think I know. IIRC, the vast majority of the welded rail that N&W put down in the Ft. Wayne area on both the former NKP and the Wabash came in the mid-seventies out of the welded rail plant in Bellevue. Of course, the New Castle District north of Muncie was rebuilt and upgraded during 1981-82. Some of the earliest welded rail in the whole region was put down by the Nickel Plate at Millers City, OH, about fifty miles east of New Haven, in the very early sixties.
QUOTE: Originally posted by ValleyX They didn't come and weld all those joints in place on that particular rail on that main. That rail came from someplace else and was put down as CWR (continuously welded rail). It may have been there long enough to come out of the rail welding plant that the N&W used to have in Bellevue, which was shut down a good number of years ago or it may have came from the rail welding plant that I understand is still somewhere in Atlanta, but I could be wrong
QUOTE: Originally posted by mudchicken Branding of the rail: 131= 131 Lbs. per yard 28 = Suffix Design Variation No. 28 (AREA 3rd variant) RE = AREA (now AREMA) profile & Standard Section.. OH = Open Hearth (Surprised to see that in a main line at this time, should be a sidetrack....subject to mill defects, occlusions, etc....usually CC, VT, BC and HH , HiSi...CC = Controlled Cooled came into its own after 1938 and became main line rail of choice) Carnegie = Carnegie Steel/ Mill Brand USA = US 1940 = Year 1940 1 = january Now go read the stamped numbers on the other side of the rail to find that rail's pedigree(Heat number, rail letter, ingot/strand/bloom...method of hydrogen elimination
QUOTE: Originally posted by dehusman 13128 RE OH Carnagie USA 1940 I" 131 lb rail RE profile rail. Rolled in the Carnegie works in January 1940. Dave H.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
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