Broken rail at 2AM

No, that is the actual break.

Dan

Wow, that looks like one heck of a flaw in that rail, if I'm seeing it right. No wonder it broke.

Very interesting, glad everyone made it with out injury and no property damage. I can see where these would almost be impossible to spot from a moving train, especially at might. Thanks for posting, good learning info.

So what do they do to fix it?

I'd be tempted to pull it back together with the come-along and get out the old Lincoln tombstone and burn a bunch of 6010.

Is it bolted back together with tie plates (probably not the correct term), or thermite welded, or is a section removed and replaced?

The track crew got track & time to work on the break  behind us.

In this case, they just put angle bars and bolted the rail back together. Being there was a 1 inch gap, they probably did heat the rail to expand it and close the gap before drilling the holes for the bolts.

Dan   

Pardon my ignorance, but by heating it up and bolting it together...would that not create stress elsewhere for another fracture to occur because of the stress - especially going into the colder weather?

That is what the rail anchors, or "anti-creepers", are designed to do, i.e. keep the rail from moving. That said, broken rails are obviously more common in bitter cold temperatures, due to extreme rail contractions.

I do believe the track crews try to lay rail when it's hot out, so that it's under tension when it cools off. Easier to fix a break like this than to fix a whole section of rail that's been pushed out of shape from expanding in the heat.. (AKA: heat kink)

" It is not uncommon for MOW to cut out small sections of rail every Spring and add (weld) them back in every Fall to reduce the number of sunkinks and pull-aparts."

I have to give another WOW from the peanut gallery viewers. It's amazing to me what goes on in these extreme conditions.

I still believe while on the SWC Amtrak in the middle of NM we hit a broken rail. First time riders were at times alarmed at the rough ride we were getting that evening. I knew it was about norm. But during dinner we hit something that made our plates jump and the crew gasp! Whatever it was....it was pretty scary!!! I am glad you were running slow order!

Not sure what type of steel the rail is made of, but I would think it might be similar to steel used in pipe? Anyway if I recall correctly (been a long time since school) carbon steel pipe expands 1 inch per 100 feet per 100 degree F rise in temperature (or close to that). In a piping system an expansion loop is installed to allow for this expansion, if temp rise and length of pipe requires it.

In many parts of the country a 100 deg F rise would be pretty common from summer to winter. Rails are quite long (maybe continuious for miles?), how do they compensate for this expansion in the rails. Sounds very tricky, but do they have any kind of expansion joint or equivalent to allow for this? They say the continuous rails are better, but seems like the older non-continuous rails, possibly with a small gap every so often for expansion may have been better for handling this? Keep in mind I know very little about real rail roads so I don't know what small gaps would do to trains or train wheels etc.

Rail is made out of high quality steel and parts of the same piece have different hardness and treatments plus  the rails are anchored pretty well.  I have read that curves help equalize expansions and contractions.

Thank you gentlemen for all input. This has been a very interesting read, I look forward to more.....if possible.

Greg

No sense of humor, eh?

That's just the farm boy in me coming out. When something breaks, you pull it back together with the come-along and weld it with the old Lincoln tombstone.

Quite frankly I think I could come up with a way to get a come-along to grip those rails. It'd just have to be one heck of a come-along.

Without damaging the rails?  Rail metallurgy is quite complicated, and the ball (top or head) of the rail, is unbelievably HARD. So hard, that if a length of rail is propped up on a block at one end, the top of the rail head can then be scored with a top quality chisel. Then using a large sledge hammer, strike the rail away from the score marks, and that short piece will normally break right off, leaving a nice clean break. Of course, now a days, the track folks use those big gasoline powered cut-off discs, to cut rails.

I have forgotten most of my metallurgy college information.  The photo shows an amazing break.  It appears that the track is very brittle to get such a clean break.  I wonder if there was a manufacturing flaw at that point.  

At least it shows that the gaps in my model railroad track are prototypical.  We had a break like this on the G&O garden railroad.  The G&O uses Atlas solid rail track.

Joe 

Thanks for correcting me. The railroads that I covered sure didn't have anything like THAT by the time I retired in late 1998. 

Here's one we found in the middle of the night MP 32, near Gardner, KS a few years ago. We were flagging, and saw it in the headlight, got stopped with it under the 3rd unit. It was over 4", so they had us wait until a track supervisor showed up to walk us over it. We had about 8000' so the head end was at Moon Light crossing before we finally got over it at 5mph or less. This break looks just like the one in the first post, and possibly started from an internal defect also. The temps had dropped about 50 degrees in 12 hrs. Seems like the first big cold snap of the year is the worse for broken rail. I can't imagine the sound that break must make when it finally lets go.

That one was in my neck of the woods, I'm just a little north of that in Lenexa. We lived about 6 blocks from the tracks in old town Lenexa for 35 years. Since you called that MP 32, would that be old Missouri Pacific tracks? I am a rail road novice and still trying to learn the tracks around here. As far as who has what and who's they used to be. Not to get too far off topic here, but any info about the local tracks would be appreciated. My email is in my profile if that would be preferred, if you would be so kind that is.

Gardner is on the BNSF Emporia sub.  Mile Post 34.  I believe it's the old ATSF main from California to Chicago.

Some other locations on that sub.

Union Station, KC - MP 0

Olathe - MP 26

Gardner - MP 34

Ottawa - MP 57

Emporia - MP 112

El Dorado - MP 172

Augusta - MP 183

Thanks, that helps. So I guess MP is Mile Post, not Mo Pacific. Guess I should have known that...

The current UP Coffeyville sub was once MoPAC. 

Leeds Jct MP 285

Bucyrus MP 312

Wagstaff MP 316

Paola MP 326

Osawatomie MP 333

A double Thank You! Got any more? Like the ones running through old town Lenexa (now BNSF) or the ones through Bonner Springs (now maybe UP)?

When I worked for MOW, the easy fix was simply to cut out a length of the rail, then drill new holes and splice together with the 3 hole bars used on ribbon rail. 

I've always wondered if any expansion joints are used and how often? Every 10 miles or at bridges or not at all?

Bonner Springs is MP 17 on the UP Kansas Sub. 

Loring MP 21

Linwood MP 28

Lawrence MP 38

Lenexa is on the BNSF Fort Scott Sub,  Ex Frisco.

Bonita MP 26.5

Hillsdale MP 37

Paola MP 43

The dark area of the break is where the fracture initiated. The bright part of the break is recent and occurred when the ultimate tensile strength of the remaining rail section was exceeded.

I am surprised that the bright area is such a large part of the cross sectional area. My thinking is that this rail does not have enough margin of safety for the traffic it is exposed to.

The crack initiation site indicates that the peak tensile stress in the rail occurs at the upper inside corner of the rail head. My guess is that the crack initiation point was due to a flaw in the rail. The flaw may have been from the foundry or induced by rail traffic.

Thanks again, this is really filling in the info I was looking for. I sent you and email before reading this post, so I think my questions have been answered. Thainks for the added info.