Rail roads and their tracks.

[Peter 315]

MOSSROAD look up Iron horse park Billerica Ma, My buddy has a reload there , Was a old B&M yard when a get a chance I will get some pictures of when it opened and what it looks like now very sad the roof is almost caved in.....

 

[Hay Dude]

Kinda with you... seems abandoning them weakens our infrastructure and limits our options for transit.

Not that I’m for socialism, but in Europe, I believe it’s much less likely to abandon RR tracks. I traveled extensively over Europe and they seem to subsidize/nationalize them?
I realize our rails are already somewhat subsidized.
I see more rails being revived in my area than abandoned, even new track being laid. Also think we may be moving back to a “made in USA” era, which may open more railroads.

 

[MossRoad]

MOSSROAD look up Iron horse park Billerica Ma, My buddy has a reload there , Was a old B&M yard when a get a chance I will get some pictures of when it opened and what it looks like now very sad the roof is almost caved in.....

Yep, I've seen that. No roundhouse there that I can find visual evidence of.

Iron Horse Park - Wikipedia

 

[ArlyA]

Gee guys, rail business is not grossly different from any other transportation system. Lets say you own a truck, and you'll get paid to haul widgets from town to town. Difference here is you'll need to haul on your own road and you'll need to pay 100% of the upkeep. So the widget hauling pays you per ton and you need to drop 100 tons off every 20 miles or so. Make up you own numbers if you like. So to stop and drop a few cars off every 20 miles or so will become a very time consuming job. To make money, you'll need to do less stops and haul more tonnage. But what if your rails are in poor shape and you'll need to upgrade to ribbon? That's millions of $$$ per mile. Many lines could not support the tonnage hauled for the maintenance of the grade. Go figure.

 

[Peter 315]

Yep, I've seen that. No roundhouse there that I can find visual evidence of.

Iron Horse Park - Wikipedia

No round house but some huge indoor shaw overhead cranes it was a full engine service shop, drill presses, lathes, etc were still in there a few years back..

 

[MossRoad]

No round house but some huge indoor shaw overhead cranes it was a full engine service shop, drill presses, lathes, etc were still in there a few years back..

Yep. There's quite a bit of information about that facility on line. Lots of historical info and pictures, and a lot of first person accounts by people that used to work there.

 

[Jstpssng]

Here's my second hand experience with freight on trains. The veneer mill in Vermont used to have logs hauled by the RR. The problem is that veneer spoils very quickly in summer weather. They would load a car and send it, but at some point the car always seemed to get disconnected and left. They literally would have to ride the tracks, to figure what siding their wood was at. When you're talking about 25K board feet at 1000 bucks or more per, they can lose a lot of money, fast.

 

[ArlyA]

here is a great video of operating and powering up a UP 844 engine and explains much. At 37 minutes in, he speaks of started out slow, or it makes problems. What he didn't explain is the 4" of slack that's found in car couplers. If he accelerate to quickly, the couplers will be broke.
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UP 844 how it operates from Running a Steam Locomotive Vol 2 Excerpt

 

[oliver1555]

844 has 84 inch drivers. It was designed for passenger service and has a design speed of 100mph. A few years ago, my uncle tried to stay with it as it headed north of Laramie, westbound. He was doing 85mph on old hwy 30, but 844 was pulling away. 4014 was designed to pull freight and was designed for much slower speeds.

 

[RobS]

I think I'd like to visit the Illinois Railway Museum. It looks huge!

View attachment 646701

It's worth a trip!

I presume you are well aware of the roundhouse in Niles? And the turntable from New Buffalo is now at SRI in Owasso, home of the Pere Marquette 1225. They had to lengthen the turntable to accommodate the mighty Berkshire.

We now frequent the Pumpkinvine trail on our bikes, used to be the Pumpkinvine railroad. So named for all of the twists and turns between Goshen and Middlebury.

Also not far from our house is a major NS line. Anyone who thinks railroads are dying should spend a few minutes there!

And there is some great railfanning at the southern end of Lake Michigan as all of the routes get compressed to get around the great lakes.

Good topic Moss!