Rother Valley Railway

Out of curiosity - by time you have trimmed the ends, then welded two rails together, is it still cheaper relative to just buying a new rail and offsetting the price against the scrap value of the equivalent length of old rail?

Tom

 

Good question. No idea. (But I believe the welding together of the short bits was largely done as a training exercise for a new mobile flash-butt welding machine.)
I am not a regular member of the p/w gang. In fact I have only done about 2 or 3 days with them over the last 9 years. Many of the volunteer p/w gang are full time paid track workers for professional track renewal companies, who love their work so much they do it as volunteers as well. Most of the plant used on KESR and RVR is actually owned by those volunteers, rather than the KESR or RVR companies.

 

The colour of the rust on the rails in the heaps would suggest to me that they are new rail.
If the rails are ex underground, what is their state of wear ? Foot Galling and side cutting in particular.
However I am not that familiar with rail ex underground.

As for trimming ends, according to standards you would need to cut 150mm off each burnt end to eliminate the oxidisation within the heat affected area of the rail.
Further consultation with standards would tell you that you can have no less than 4.5 or approx 15ft between any weld or joint. Preferably more specially on a curve.

Welding up into lengths is a common practice and in various areas 3 x 60fts were welded into 180fts, but lately due to climate change this practice has ceased even into 120fts or 2 lengths is only used occaisionally.
Welding into CWR for stressing though, is still normal practice. Commonly carried out at a rail depot into long lengths of 700ft + and delivered to site by train.

Welds themselves can be costly if not planned right. The initial cost for a pair of welds may be about £500 but the subsequent cost for more welds may drop to a £100. The amount per shift from a regular team of welders with no great access problems would be 6 - 8 welds per 10 hour shift.
If you could afford the set up costs, a quicker method would be the use of a Flash butt welder which can churn out a weld every 20 minutes, with preparation.

Scrap rail would be worth about £120 per tonne and for new rail about £900 per 60ft unless you strike a deal.

 

There is not only the question of the respective prices, but also longevity. If some rail is worn to the extent that it is no longer fit for use on the Underground (or NR), how long does it remain good enough for a heritage line? What determines acceptability for the respective locations?

 

There's some comments from the SVR in the item 'new life for old track' that may contribute to the discussion of second hand rail.

Patrick

 

Who can remember the state of the track, that the MHR got for its Alton extension, This was i assume thought to be of good quality, but turned out not to be, as years of EMU'S hammering the railhead ended up wrecking the entire loco fleet, and the whole lot had to be re railed, If this track is former LUL, might it have the same vibration issues?

 

The FB rail is basically new with most only about 1mm head wear. Having not been down for long on the big railway it had to be lifted over a number of Sunday possessions to rectify an unexpected drainage issue

 

Thanks Mike.

I was sure that someone who knew the full facts would pop up on here soon.

 

Christmas competition:


Guess the weight of the stack.
I'm kicking off at 216 imperial tons.
Whatever, that's quite a lot for such a small piece of ground to carry!

 

I'll go for 192 tons. Just wondering who has the definitive answer.
Intigued at the stacking in tiers 8-11. I wonder why they didn't stick with the more stable arrangement used for the rest of the pile.

 

Possibly stacked on different days, with different lifting equipment which may not have had the ability to centre lift each rail and spin it into position. Such as a reach stacker instead of a tall jib crane.

 

I hope Matt Hancock doesn't read Nat Pres. I fear that if he sees a post like this, it might give him ideas!

 

Yes that is an odd bit of stacking particularly as there isn't any dunnage between the parallel tiers.
Presumably the rails were stacked using 2 RRV's as a single standard RRV wouldn't be stable lifting a rail weighing 750-800kg.
At a quick guess 246 tonnes.
( 20 rails in 16 tiers . 45 foot lengths roughly 14 metres. 113lb per yard is 56 kg per metre.)

Cheers, Neil

PS: Incidentally NWR cut rails into 30 foot lengths as they fit neatly on articulated lorries and fit inside open air braked wagons. ( OCA etc and their engineering wagon types of ZCA etc.) Unfortunately NWR send much of their rail back to the furnaces as it's cheaper than retrieving part worn strings of cwr for re-use.

 

Superb picture (by Jack Evans) of the turntable bridge being delivered to Robertsbridge. This is the particularly awkward turn into Station Road.
Apart from being an excellent advert for Mick Gould, the local heavy haulage firm based just up the road in Flimwell, the efficient execution of this major project should leave the local population in no doubt about the professionalism of the whole RVR operation:

 

Alas though, there will always be some people who won't want to admit the professionalism, of the RVR, some members of the local population for instance.

 

The rail we had donated by Network Rail was cut into 20fts and all joints still in place, quicker to cut than undo the plates.
However it was all deemed as scrap so we just reloaded and sent for scrap. We have also stripped and sorted about 3000 of the 4500 sleepers for recycling.

 

Flat Earth Society.

 

I based my calcultion on 16 tiers of 27 lengths average at 27ft 6in/length. The length was established by counting the sleeper spaces on the adjacent track. 113 lb/yd less a bit for wear.

 

For anyone interested in the recovery and reuse of redundant rail for heritage line use, you might care to look at the Victorian Goldfields Railway (VGR) civil blog. This 10.5 mile long heritage branchline in the Australian state of Victoria runs from Castlemaine to Maldon on very old lightweight track that could reasonable be considered life expired. Outside Castlemaine it had a junction with the now closed cross country line to Maryborough. The VGR were donated several miles of this track from their junction and have been busy these last few weeks recovering the good quality rail seeming by draging long sections some distances, including over levelcrossings, before loading it onto wagons and distributing it about their railway. It seems that ingenuity in railway preservation is as alive and well in Australia as it is in the UK. The blog is well worth a look for anyone interested in how others in our preservation game made use of an unprecedented opertunity that suddenly presented itself.

Peter

 

I based mine on 30ft lengths, hence the difference. I wonder if Mike knows the cut lengths?