Any of you engineers know how much it takes to bend railroad track?

[Bedlam]

I know of a garage that uses a carrier ''timber'' of RR track. its been up for many many years with no ill effects..I always wondered how they raised it up, and was told they cribbed and jacked up in..Now I'm wondering just what the load caring specs would be . It isn't designed for this purpose so I'm sure it isn't well known

 

[Dargo]

Well, we've had a lot of short but heavy rain showers in the last week, so I've waited to put the guy wire and turnbuckle on the RR track. I figured that it's been long enough, so I pulled the RR track back straight and hooked up a 5/8" cable and turnbuckle for a backside anchor. Once I released the RR track from holding it with the excavator, it seems to be holding fine. That 6' piece of 8" I beam that's completely buried with only a 5/8" eye bolt showing above ground hasn't moved. I even plated to top half of the 8" I beam and, I assure you, you can pull it out of the ground with the eye bolt before you'll pull the eye bolt off.

Doesn't it seem like everything takes longer than you plan? Gees, I figured to have already have had the launch platform built by now and be working on replacing the surface of my dock this weekend. Oh well, I sent my son's (fat) friend across the zipline this morning after my work and it never moved. He weighs about 350 lbs. Now it's time to run off to get the posts, lumber and concrete for the launch platform. Then when I get back, I'll have to decide if I want to begin the work on a sunny 95 degree humid day though. I'll get the materials anyway.

 

[kebo]

I'll bet this is because of work hardening. If so, this is not in the way it was made, but in the way it was used.

Roll a (heavy) train over a piece of track many, many, many times. The top surface will undergo plastic deformation, and along the way get hard.

John

Rail does wear quite easily, especially when heavy freight trains run on it. In my previous job I worked as a technician for a company that designed & built rail measurement equipment. Their systems used lasers and cameras to measure the rail and generate a profile of it, and the software could measure the amount of wear on the rail with amazing accuracy. And it did this in a "non-contact" manner all the while the vehicle carrying it was rolling down the tracks. It's called non contact track geometry measurement in case you're wondering. The track geometry part of it would measure various track parameters such as superelevation, curvature, alignment, and track gauge. All of these are important, including the rail profile, to find track defects as mandated by the FRA to help prevent derailments.

But, to the subject, the rail surface can wear down quite easily especially the inside (low) rail on a curve as most of the weight shifts to that side of the track. Every so often a rail company will send a grinding train down a track to grind the rails and put a new profile on them. That's when the measurement system is very important so they know how much metal to grind off with the grinding stones. Lots of sparks fly when they do that at night!!


Next time you look at a railroad track, just think, there's a whole lot more to it than just two parallel pieces of metal mounted 56 1/2" from each other.

 

[Window Geek]

I've gotten so tired of changing the shear bolts (on the PHD) that I went from the normal grade 2 to grade 5. (My ground is really hard clay) I still snapped a couple, but at least I was able to get the hole dug.

:shocked:
Jeez Dargo! You should be happy the grade 5 bolts broke and not the driveline. A "U" joint costs a lot more than a shear bolt. If you break the joint, you could have the PTO shaft swinging around pretty darn quick. Be careful buddy. We've still got to get the chance to see you on that zip line. :laughing:

Congrats to your daughter!