How was new tubular rail manufactured?

A little bit of Lionel's tubular track manufacturing is shown at around 2:45 on this 1951 video.

Inside Lionel's train factory, part 1 - YouTube

I'd like to see more too!

More at 7:29 on this video

1950s Iron Ponies Electric Trains - YouTube

If you have ever watched them make aluminum gutters at a job site, I think that would give you a pretty good idea how the rails are formed.  Unless I am wrong.

Interesting, Lionelski. As I managed the film archives storage facility for MOMA, a friend who was a film collector and former projectionist out here in NE PA, gave me a16mm copy of Iron Ponies, and I, in turn donated it to MoMA. (After watching it about a dozen times-we had a conference/screening room at the vaults), I donated to MoMA, so it’s part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Tubular track is still being made. Why not ask a manufacturer, such as Ross, if they might share information about their methods and/or machinery?

The 2000 Convention of the Lionel Collectors Club of America (LCCA) was held in Dearborn, MI, and tours of the nearby Lionel factory (then in production) were a must-do experience.  I took the tour and saw the track-making machinery in operation. The guide said the track production machinery dated back of the late 1930s, with some upgrades. I should  have taken photos!

Mike Mottler      LCCA 12394

I pulled these pictures out of the K-Line book covering its first 25 years.  I believe it shows how flat steel rolls are forced through a die.

@Mike H Mottler posted:

The 2000 Convention of the Lionel Collectors Club of America (LCCA) was held in Dearborn, MI, and tours of the nearby Lionel factory (then in production) were a must-do experience.  I took the tour and saw the track-making machinery in operation. The guide said the track production machinery dated back of the late 1930s, with some upgrades. I should  have taken photos!

Mike Mottler      LCCA 12394

I went to the LCCA convention in Dearborn in the early 90's and toured the Lionel factory in Chesterfield (or was it in Mt Clemens?). I, too, watched the track being made.

Per the photos, Lionel wouldn't let us take pictures on the factory tour.

@D500 posted:

I went to the LCCA convention in Dearborn in the early 90's and toured the Lionel factory in Chesterfield (or was it in Mt Clemens?). I, too, watched the track being made.

Per the photos, Lionel wouldn't let us take pictures on the factory tour.

I was on that same tour. The offices and the "demonstration layout" were in Mount Clemens, MI. The factory in that same business park but a few blocks down was in Chesterfield.

I do concur that BEFORE we left the bus for the factory tour, our tour guides made it clear no photos allowed during the tour of the factory.

I hope that helps.

@Arthur P. Bloom posted:

Tubular track is still being made. Why not ask a manufacturer, such as Ross, if they might share information about their methods and/or machinery?

Why? All it is is coil steel run through a steel forming  machine that shapes the coil steel into a I rail shape, then cuts the rail to whatever lengths. If you need a curved section, you run the rail through a steel bender if the steel shaper doesnt have the bender attachment on the end.

@Lionelski posted:

More at 7:29 on this video

1950s Iron Ponies Electric Trains - YouTube

Lionelski, Thank You for posting this. The video is worth a thousand words. It shows long strips of metal going through a series of rollers. Long pieces of rail are cut to length. An assembly machine is manually loaded with rails onto cross-ties to be stamped together.

Cut pieces of straight rails are run through a shaper that curves them. I'm wondering if the three rails are all cut to the length of the longest outside rail, then the lengths trimmed after they are assembled onto the cross-ties? Or would they pre-cut the three rails before assembling a track unit?

I would have liked to see more detail of the series of metal forming rollers but I suppose that's propriety information.

I've salvaged a lot of old track acquired for cheap or free, some of it quite rusty. Once I got a large box of old O72 track, including the 'long straights', for just $5 at a train show. Most of that is still in service on my large floor layout. Oftentimes I disassembled track to straighten bent and damaged rails and ties by hammering them on metal jigs. I was a long way from the sources of supply, so I salvaged what I could.

Trains are fun, but imagine the tedium of the full-time manual assembly work as shown in that video. Looks like they had many women and younger people doing the repetitious assembly and testing jobs. Jobs since delegated to other countries for the most part.

@Bill DeBrooke posted:

I pulled these pictures out of the K-Line book covering its first 25 years.  I believe it shows how flat steel rolls are forced through a die.

Thank you for posting this, Bill. The top left photo is particularly interesting as it shows a continuous roll of strip metal feeding through a long series of shapers. I think the upper right photo shows where the long rails are cut into short lengths? The round track assembly table is an economy version of the one shown in the the Lionel factory video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPOWc8Fj20k  This is a great YouTube of how tinplate track is made

@Lionelski posted:

A little bit of Lionel's tubular track manufacturing is shown at around 2:45 on this 1951 video.

Inside Lionel's train factory, part 1 - YouTube

I'd like to see more too!

It’s funny how the cattle car in this video works so much better than yours ever did, but the milk car shows the true operations with the cans falling all over the place.
Alan

@Keith k posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPOWc8Fj20k  This is a great YouTube of how tinplate track is made

This 12-minute video shows rail being assembled onto ties to make Standard Gauge track. It doesn't show how the tubular rail was formed from flat steel strips, which was my original question.

The presenter says they make the tubular rail from flat steel strips, producing 10 miles in a run, but this process isn't shown. "Most of our rails come cut to length from the rolling plant."

"The rails are made on our tooling. We take it to what's called a roll forming plant where a strip of flat tin is run through a machine which turns it into the rail shape."  This implies their tooling is at another plant?

I was hoping to learn how many stages of rolling and forming it takes to get the final shape of tubular rail, just for general interest of that kind of manufacturing process. But I reckon that's proprietary information, even if it's something that's been done for decades.

Standard gauge tubular rail is the same size as Standard-O tubular rail, as far as I know. But it was mentioned in this video that they use slightly larger track pins for a tighter fit.

There should be nothing about the rolling process or extrusion process that is proprietary. Cold rolling or in the case of aluminum, the extrusion process is very straight forward.  Start with flat or billet stock and force through a machine that either rolls or extrudes the product to the desired shape.  This is done with everything from structural steel to aluminum window systems in the building industry.  The process is the same as it is with extruded aluminum cars in this hobby.  K-Line aluminum cars were a great example as they produced 21", 18" and 15" length cars from the same tool.  The extrusions are simply cut to length.

With enough force, any metal is malleable.

This YouTube video link shows aluminum being extruded.

Hopefully this explains the process better.

@Ace I know this isn't exactly what you're asking, and it's already been mentioned by @Bill DeBrooke, but it might help give you an idea how many roller dies it might have taken to form the tubular rail shape.  This is a decent video showing the different roller die stages through which a strip of metal passes to form a typical gutter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebBDR-o6jgU

Wrong, the pins are actually the SAME size.

@Tinplate Art posted:

Wrong, the pins are actually the SAME size.

If you actually watch the video at 7:30 the presenter says they have their own pins custom-made 0.005" larger than the original production.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPOWc8Fj20k

@SteveH posted:

@Ace I know this isn't exactly what you're asking, and it's already been mentioned by @Bill DeBrooke, but it might help give you an idea how many roller dies it might have taken to form the tubular rail shape.  This is a decent video showing the different roller die stages through which a strip of metal passes to form a typical gutter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebBDR-o6jgU

Thank you, that is rather interesting to see the detailed sequence of shaping rollers. I'm just curious how it is done on a smaller scale with tubular track.

My experience with modern tubular standard gauge track confirms the fact that the O gauge pins and the standard gauge pins are the same diameter. In the prewar production, that was probably not the case.

How many OSHA violations can we see in those two factory photos.  :-)

I was really surprised to see it was in 1983.  I honestly thought they were from about 1938.

Mannyrock