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String Lining

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NDG
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Posted by NDG on Monday, June 10, 2019 11:03 AM
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Posted by Paul_D_North_Jr on Monday, June 10, 2019 7:13 PM

I've got to wonder - how did they get it back on the track?  Tow truck?  Another trainset pullling it back?  Doubt if they called Hulcher or R.J. Corman (or whoever it is up there in Canada) 

- PDN. 

"This Fascinating Railroad Business" (title of 1943 book by Robert Selph Henry of the AAR)
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Posted by Overmod on Monday, June 10, 2019 8:11 PM

Paul_D_North_Jr
I've got to wonder - how did they get it back on the track?

That's easy - have a lawyer tell Lyft to get it rerailed and inspected by Saturday, or else.  Let them worry about logistics and environmental impact and permitting issues, and soak 'em just the same if everything isn't fixed 'like it never even happened'.

That's the new North American Way.  Like how many Georgia socialites it takes to change a light bulb.  One to mix the drinks and one to call the electrician.  (He will get a bad rating on social media if he doesn't do it right for a cheap price, too.)

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Posted by BaltACD on Monday, June 10, 2019 8:11 PM

Paul_D_North_Jr
I've got to wonder - how did they get it back on the track?  Tow truck?  Another trainset pullling it back?  Doubt if they called Hulcher or R.J. Corman (or whoever it is up there in Canada) 

- PDN. 

It is amazing what can be done with appropriately placed wooden blocks and wedges in moving wheels back on rails.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txNMwminoiw

 

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by Overmod on Monday, June 10, 2019 8:27 PM

BaltACD
It is amazing what can be done with appropriately placed wooden blocks and wedges in moving wheels back on rails.

Balt, did you look at the picture in the article?  Looked to me like the front of that train is many feet away from any tracks, far from where blocks and shoes will do much, and with the flanges on what looks like building pavement.

I suspect disassembly into sections and then a rubber-tired sling lift to minimize any further pavement or 'floor' damage.  Probably onto flatbeds to drive it to the shop.

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Posted by BaltACD on Monday, June 10, 2019 8:42 PM

Overmod
 
BaltACD
It is amazing what can be done with appropriately placed wooden blocks and wedges in moving wheels back on rails. 

Balt, did you look at the picture in the article?  Looked to me like the front of that train is many feet away from any tracks, far from where blocks and shoes will do much, and with the flanges on what looks like building pavement.

I suspect disassembly into sections and then a rubber-tired sling lift to minimize any further pavement or 'floor' damage.  Probably onto flatbeds to drive it to the shop.

Wheels that leave the track in pavement areas, tend to follow their furrows back toward the rail when moved in the reverse direction.  Wooden blocking can assist this action and can minimize further damage to the pavement.  

Each derailment presents its own challenges in applying the physics of movement to reach the final answer of restoring all equipment back on the rail.  No two are truly identical.

I have no idea if TTC has 'carmen' with the necessary levels of skill to perform the actions required.  In the real world of railroading there are probably 10 derailments that are rerailed with wooden blocking, wedges and sometimes 'bat wing' steel replacers for everyone that required heavy lift equipment to take care of.

 

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by tree68 on Monday, June 10, 2019 8:44 PM

Overmod
I suspect disassembly into sections and then a rubber-tired sling lift to minimize any further pavement or 'floor' damage.  Probably onto flatbeds to drive it to the shop.

The article said they just pulled it back, although they didn't say with what.  They did mention damage to the pavement in the process, though.

LarryWhistling
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Posted by Flintlock76 on Monday, June 10, 2019 9:26 PM

Gee, that thing looks small enough, they could probably re-rail it like they did back in the railroad's pioneering years.  Get all the passengers together, get the conductor out front and...

"OK everybody, when I say lift, LIFT!  When I say push, PUSH!" 

"Let's go!"

Simple enough.  Worked in the 1830's.  Wink

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Posted by Miningman on Monday, June 10, 2019 10:02 PM

After 127 years of running electric streetcars and an additional 31 years horse drawn streetcars before that I think the Toronto Transit Commision knows how to get a Streetcar back on the track. 

As to Flintlocks suggestion... ummm, no. Can you imagine the lawsuits 95% fake these days. 

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Posted by Paul of Covington on Monday, June 10, 2019 10:42 PM

   They must not make 'em the way they used to.  When I was in my teens, there was an accident between streetcar and car by my school.  I didn't see it, but happened by just after, and saw the car draped all over the front of the streetcar.  As I recall, after they peeled off the car, the streetcar continued on its way.  The paint may have been scratched up a bit, but I didn't notice.

_____________ 

  "A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner

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Posted by Overmod on Tuesday, June 11, 2019 4:44 PM

NDG
Also in The Great White North. A Vauclain Compound.

Note the inverted cylinders, necessary on 'cabbage-cutters' like this one that need the LP cylinders on top for clearance.

Someone at that museum needs to go back and revise their research, as they have neatly listed the talking points for the Vauclain balanced compound, the second design, which this certainly ain't.  Of all the designs of four-cylinder compound, this just about ties with the tandem compound as the worst from the standpoint of augment and need for overbalance, compounded (no pun intended) by the lamentable wear stresses on the crosshead and guides, soon followed by the pistons, rods, and glands, as the decidedly unbalanced, especially in Great White North conditions much of the year, piston thrusts tended to cock things obliquely with some force.

Of course, the fastest locomotive in the world less than half a decade before this one was built was this kind of Vauclain Compound, so there's some excuse for it...

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Posted by Paul_D_North_Jr on Tuesday, June 11, 2019 8:33 PM

Miningman/ Vince and Wanswheel/ MIke - 

Thanks for sharing "The Keweenaw Virgin" chapter - fascinating reading, and well-written, too.  Was there - Houghton/ Hancock - on a sunny August Sunday afternoon 'a few years back' to ride an excursion on the DSS&A from Marquette to Baraga, but didn't have time to do much more than dip my toes in Lake Superior (cold!!).  I've seen some other good articles about the rail operations, the C&H, and the Torch Lake - probably in Trains from the 1960s and 1970s, but can't be sure about that.  Would like to go back sometime.  

- PDN.  

"This Fascinating Railroad Business" (title of 1943 book by Robert Selph Henry of the AAR)
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Posted by Overmod on Tuesday, June 11, 2019 8:49 PM

One memorable article, which would be I think in the '60s, involved Mason bogies of the Calumet and Hecla (one of which was named Torch Lake) and you should find it fairly easily with that as a search term.  

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Posted by tree68 on Tuesday, June 11, 2019 9:42 PM

Overmod

One memorable article, which would be I think in the '60s, involved Mason bogies of the Calumet and Hecla (one of which was named Torch Lake) and you should find it fairly easily with that as a search term.  

The Torch Lake is at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI.  I rode behind her several years ago.

LarryWhistling
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Posted by Euclid on Tuesday, June 11, 2019 10:15 PM

It is nice to see the coverage on the Keweenaw Peninsula.  It is a place packed with industrial history of deep rock mining and railroads, both narrow gage and standard.  Calumet & Hecla Mining and Quincy Mining were the last two largest mines, with C&H closed in the late 1960s, and Quincy closed in 1945.  The Red Jacket shaft of C&H was a vertical shaft over a mile deep, and the deepest shaft of Quincy Mine was about 2 miles deep on an incline that followed the dip of the copper lode.  

Both companies had many shafts and most were on the incline of the lode.  Red Jacket was an exception.  Tamarack Mining also sunk very deep vertical shafts to intercept the inclined lode just beyond the C&H property line.  C&H had bought up all the prime land along the line where the lode surfaced in Calumet.  So Tamack bought up cheaper land and gambled that they could sink deep shafts vertically, and reach the same lode C&H was mining, if they went deep enough and if the lode still had copper at that depth.  The gamble paid off, but it took Tamarack something like 4 years to to sink the first vertical shaft.  And that was 4 years of going straight down though poor rock with no financial return just with the hope of striking the C&H lode and finding copper that would pay for the vertical shaft. 

Out in the forests, there are hundreds of very old mines with extensive underground workings and the ruins of their surface plants.  Some of those mines were closed by 1850.  That book called Boom Copper mentioned on the previous page is just excellent writing.  It is some of the best and most interesting writing I have ever seen.  The Copper Country is also a wild and rugged area, not exactly what one would expect with Michigan.  The ruggedness is evidence of intense geological history going back to the Mid-Continent Rift that started to tear the North American land mass in half, which would lead to the formation of a new ocean.  But it stopped for some reason and only formed Lake Superior.   

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Posted by Paul_D_North_Jr on Wednesday, June 12, 2019 7:58 PM

Thanks for that hint and nudge, Overmod.  The Magazine Index seems to be working now (it wasn't for quite a while), and here's what I got:

Hecla & Torch Lake/Calumet & Hecla
from Trains August 1972  p. 29

- PDN.

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Posted by Deggesty on Friday, June 14, 2019 7:10 PM

I posted this on the Ivy City accident thread, and Overmod suggested that it fits here. So, for those who did not see that post, here it is: As to adjusting a drawbar or knuckle while making a joint, I do not recall if there is a rule that says the movement must be stopped before making any such adjustment.

Johnny

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Posted by tree68 on Friday, June 14, 2019 7:21 PM

Deggesty
I posted this on the Ivy City accident thread, and Overmod suggested that it fits here. So, for those who did not see that post, here it is: As to adjusting a drawbar or knuckle while making a joint, I do not recall if there is a rule that says the movement must be stopped before making any such adjustment.

I'd have to dig through NORAC...

Any time I go "in between" and there is less than 50 feet, more or less, between the locomotive and the car (or the two cars, as the case may be), I will call for "three step," which means the locomotive is stopped.

I know a fellow who tried to adjust a coupler with his foot as the hitch was occuring.  He suffered significant damage to his foot.

If the locomotive is well away from the consist, I may step in and make the adjustment without stopping the locomotive.

Safety first.

LarryWhistling
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Posted by Euclid on Sunday, June 16, 2019 7:54 AM

Paul_D_North_Jr

Thanks for that hint and nudge, Overmod.  The Magazine Index seems to be working now (it wasn't for quite a while), and here's what I got:

Hecla & Torch Lake/Calumet & Hecla
from Trains August 1972  p. 29

- PDN.

 

That is an excellent article about the Hecla & Torch Lake RR.  Gage was 4'-1".  Today, few people realize what an industrial beehive Calumet, MI was in that era as they sunk shafts thousands of feet deep to mine copper, and railroad tracks were like cobwebs.  H&TL pulled long trains of 4-wheel ore cars up the steep grade from Lake Linden to Calumet.  Prior to that, they used an inclined rope railway. 

At the start of the copper boom, people rushed to the Keweenaw planning to pick up pure copper boulders and return home.  But it took over 100 years to figure out where to dig the holes. 

Eventually they found the evidence of ancient mining and followed that clue.  Massive tonnage of copper had been mined and taken out of the area over 1000 years ago.  There is a probability that it was over 10,000 years ago.  Their primitive mine pits are visible today. 

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Posted by zugmann on Sunday, June 16, 2019 8:07 AM

Deggesty
I posted this on the Ivy City accident thread, and Overmod suggested that it fits here. So, for those who did not see that post, here it is: As to adjusting a drawbar or knuckle while making a joint, I do not recall if there is a rule that says the movement must be stopped before making any such adjustment.

For us - to adjust a drawbar or knuckle ( or to foul the track where your train is, or are lined into) you need protection.  So, yeah, train stopped, brakes applied to hold the movement, reverser centered, generator field switch down, and all that good stuff.  Must be at least a 50' separation.  Drawbar can't be adjusted with your foot (kicking it).

It's been fun.  But it isn't much fun anymore.   Signing off for now. 


  

The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any

NDG
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Posted by NDG on Wednesday, June 19, 2019 2:05 AM
NDG
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Posted by NDG on Wednesday, June 19, 2019 3:47 AM

 

 

O.T? 

The Fourth Kingdom. Bakelite. 

 
 

Thank You.

NDG
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Posted by NDG on Friday, June 21, 2019 4:57 PM
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Posted by Miningman on Friday, June 21, 2019 5:39 PM

Well there goes the flower garden! 

NDG
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Posted by NDG on Friday, June 21, 2019 10:29 PM

 

FYI.

Locomotive Here Today.

 
KCSM 4136.
 
 
Along with the Snow.
 

Thank You.

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Posted by Miningman on Friday, June 21, 2019 10:56 PM

Not your everyday visitor to British Columbia. 

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Posted by SD70Dude on Saturday, June 22, 2019 1:03 AM

Foreign units have been getting more and more common out here over past couple years, in addition to the regular CP-UP run-throughs:

https://www.railpictures.net/photo/673487/

https://www.railpictures.net/photo/673254/

https://www.railpictures.net/photo/700386/

https://www.railpictures.net/photo/700241/

http://www.railpictures.ca/?attachment_id=37931

A far cry from the days when this was the most that could be expected for a mixed consist:

https://www.railpictures.net/photo/677379/

Greetings from Alberta

-an Articulate Malcontent

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Posted by tree68 on Saturday, June 22, 2019 6:11 AM

Visitors to the Deshler rail cams (which has a chat alongside) often ask what railroad it is.  Nevermind that said information is included in the description, you can't really blame them.  On any give day you might well see locomotives from all the Class 1's, and sometimes they seem to outnumber the CSX locomotives - on two CSX lines.

The vast majority of locomotive visitors seem to be run-through power.

LarryWhistling
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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Saturday, June 22, 2019 7:00 AM

Leasers can also add to the confusion.  BNSF has some long-term leased GP38's working locals and switching out of Hodgkins just to add some variety.

The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul

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