High Speed Steam in Real Life

@BillYo414 posted:

@Number 90 is there some reason they resisted upgrading? Just cost of installing rail while stick rail was still working?

Large railroads are large organizations with groups of people having varying opinions about what is best for the Company.  That's why they have System Standards, and each company differs in some things from its competitors.  The long 72-foot rails were, in themselves, an example of this.  There must have been a desire to test whether stick rail with only half as many rail joints as normal would be less expensive to maintain, than continuous welded rail, which, as has been pointed out, has to have short sections cut out or added in, seasonally.  And, when the 72 foot rails were installed in the late 1950's, there were still Section Gangs at intervals, so the bolts could be checked often.

Obviously, continuous welded rail was determined by UPRR's Engineering Department, to be their System Standard. But they were willing to experiment, and that is one of the trademarks of the pre-merger Union Pacific.

@bigkid posted:

The telephone pole thing made me laugh.

You guys can laugh all you want, but, it worked! However, you didn't count the poles over the entire mile! Since there were forty poles per mile, you only counted ten poles or four poles and then did the proper multiplication! "Close enough for gov'ment work" as they say!

The fastest I’ve ever experienced riding behind steam was on NJT with C&O 614. It was quite the ride! I can only imagine what it was like up in the cab at 75+ MPH.

With welded rail, special anchors that grip the base of the rail right next to each side of a crosstie ("rail anchors") are used at almost every tie in order to constrain lateral movement of the rail and force it to expand vertically rather than horizontally. In southern Arizona on the Union Pacific route through Tucson, daily temperatures can range from 115 in the summer to the low 30s overnight in the winter. The long sections of welded rail in use on this two-track line (former SP Sunset Route) are restrained by rail anchors to prevent or minimize horizontal expansion and contraction. Sometimes extreme heat can cause kinks even in heavily anchored rail, but I have never actually seen this happen on the UP route through Arizona.

@Big Jim posted:

You guys can laugh all you want, but, it worked!

I used water in a clear tube to set the level of my desk outside. Simple works! It's just a fact

That's interesting @B Smith. I was expecting that they just planned curves differently to allow them to move a bit and absorb the expansion/contraction.

@B Smith posted:

With welded rail, special anchors that grip the base of the rail right next to each side of a crosstie ("rail anchors") are used at almost every tie in order to constrain lateral movement of the rail and force it to expand vertically rather than horizontally. In southern Arizona on the Union Pacific route through Tucson, daily temperatures can range from 115 in the summer to the low 30s overnight in the winter. The long sections of welded rail in use on this two-track line (former SP Sunset Route) are restrained by rail anchors to prevent or minimize horizontal expansion and contraction. Sometimes extreme heat can cause kinks even in heavily anchored rail, but I have never actually seen this happen on the UP route through Arizona.

Are you sure that you don't mean movement "longitudinally"? I was told by the "Roadmaster" that the track had to expand vertically out of the roadbed before it could move horizontally.

Yes -- thanks -- "longitudinally" is a more accurate way to say it. I was thinking of "horizontally" in the sense of "lengthwise," but "longitudinally" is a much better word for it!

The whole idea of the rail anchors is that they force the rail to expand vertically rather than lengthwise (longitudinally) because they lock the base or the rail against the cross tie on each side.

I remember an article in Classic Trains mag about the Milwaukee Road atlantics where the engineer said something about how it felt as the speedo would top the century mark: "sitting astride the locomotive and just cracking the whip"