A prototype for everything: steel crossties on real railways

Would you believe ... Y - shaped steel ties?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_tie 

I guess this is a German experiment, said to have better load-spreading characteristics requiring less ballast.

Ties in right foreground appear to be steel. Maybe those are what Hot Water saw in former East Germany.

Steel sleepers (crossties) have been used on the isolated Normanton-Croydon railway in Queensland Australia since 1888. This line is still in service for tourism using vintage railmotors. It has always had relatively light traffic. Photo from internet:

http://mobilemarshies.blogspot.com/2012/06/normanton-19-24-june.html

https://youtu.be/XRP6xpFcvkU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulflander

The line was constructed in an unusual manner, with hollow steel sleepers packed with mud to avoid the need for track ballast.^[2] This method of construction also meant that the line was not subject to damage during frequent flooding during the wet season,^[1] with most of these original sleepers still in place.

The underground coal mines i worked at use steel ties for there track when i run supplies into mines with track motor's

NS uses them in their yards.

There is a small section of them in Galveston in front of the Fisherman's Wharf and the barque ELISSA in the port area.

Nice to know that my 027 is prototypical. 

Years ago several of us were walking the tunnels west of the Tehachapi Loop, the interesting part was the SP had installed metal ties thru the tunnels. We joked that it looked like American Flyer track.

When the Puget Sound and Pacific was putting in a new siding outside of Elma, WA a few years ago, they laid it down on pre-formed metal ties. I'd never seen any like that before.

I think they uses steel ties Down Under because of the lack of trees there.

Here is a March 2010 Railway Age article which mentions wood, concrete, composite and steel crossties compared for environmental reasons. 

http://www.railwayage.com/inde...olor-them-green.html

Tom

Big_Boy_4005 posted:

Originally Posted by CSX FAN:

Alaska RR still has some here and there close to Seward.  One reason they stopped using them because after a derail the gauge was no longer correct when the tie got bent forcing them to replace every one of them.

 

Jamie

 

Concrete ties have the same problem in derailments. There's something to be said for good old fashioned wood, as long as your Bedouins don't use them for fires.

Elliot,

I tried to ignore this post for almost a week but I feel compelled to speak up for concrete ties. I grew up around tracks with concrete ties in India & so love them a lot more than wood ties (OK, I hate wood ties), similar to the attitude of the obnoxious sport fans defending their favorite sports team.

Concrete ties by itself have the disadvantage you mentioned of not being convenient to reuse / repair after a derailment but how often do trains derail on tracks having concrete ties? Whenever I read articles on this forum or pictures online of derailments, I almost always try to find what ties were under the tracks. I have seen photos of derailment on tracks with wood ties because the ties deteriorated allowing the rails to roll or the gauge widened or the ties shifted. The only derailments I see on tracks having concrete ties seem to be unrelated to the ties like grade crossing collision or trains passing a signal, at danger.

Concrete ties are expensive & seem to be used in North America where wood ties didn’t work before like the consistently heavily loaded tracks like in the Powder River Coal Basin in WY or for high speed rail where the concrete ties, along with the continuously welded rails & perfectly graded road bed allow smoother rides at higher speeds.

Concrete ties don’t rot like wood ties with age.

Concrete ties don’t use spikes which seem to come loose on wood ties.

Concrete ties can be fabricated in large quantities with dimensions closer to the design dimensions which means less variation from tie to tie.

Concrete ties have the fastening mechanisms like Pandrol e-clip, fastclip or Vossloh’s cast-in built-in not installed on site as in wood ties allowing greater variance in gauge in wood ties.

Concrete ties are much heavier (610 to 882 lb / tie) vs 200 lbs for wood tie which prevents concrete ties from shifting as much as the wood ties.

These are just my opinion.

Thanks,

Naveen Rajan

Here is more on the benefits of steel ties:

http://www.narstco.com/benefits.html

The first line mentions:

The estimated life of a steel tie is presently set at 50 years.

I didn't really see anything that mentions rust as an issue. Wouldn't rust be a problem in especially very humid climates?

Tom

MNCW posted:

Here is more on the benefits of steel ties:

http://www.narstco.com/benefits.html

The first line mentions:

The estimated life of a steel tie is presently set at 50 years.

I didn't really see anything that mentions rust as an issue. Wouldn't rust be a problem in especially very humid climates?

Tom 

I suspect rust wouldn't be any more of an issue than it is for regular rails, tie plates, rail fastenings, etc.

It's interesting to note that modern steel ties don't need tie plates and the cant for the rails is built in to the shape of the steel crosstie. But the rails would need to be insulated from the steel ties for conventional signalling systems.

The banner photo on their web site shows steel ties with different profiles in the same track. Apparently they make various types with different ratings for different applications.

the ones in Galveston are in the dock area, that is, near salt water.  And Galveston is as humid as Houston in the summer.

According to Franklin King's book "The Missabe Road", the Duluth Missabe and Iron Range experimented with steel ties on a stretch of track many years back, maybe 1950's? Of course the Missabe was owned by United States Steel.

Always found this topic interesting...Ace thanks for the original post.

Here is a link for an installation of NARSTCO Steel Railroad Ties for the UP at Joliet, Il.

https://youtu.be/7CMWPpg8v7k 

Note that the ties are laid out, then the rails, initially all on no ballast and then the tamper comes along and scoops the ballast and inserts it under the "pods"/ties which were hollow and at that point, filled with the ballast.

Tom

Ace posted:

Steel sleepers (crossties) have been used on the isolated Normanton-Croydon railway in Queensland Australia since 1888. This line is still in service for tourism using vintage railmotors. It has always had relatively light traffic. Photo from internet:

http://mobilemarshies.blogspot.com/2012/06/normanton-19-24-june.html

https://youtu.be/XRP6xpFcvkU

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulflander

The line was constructed in an unusual manner, with hollow steel sleepers packed with mud to avoid the need for track ballast.^[2] This method of construction also meant that the line was not subject to damage during frequent flooding during the wet season,^[1] with most of these original sleepers still in place.

Just like my American Flyer!