Western Railroad Discussion > Tie Gang Tuesday

The tie gang on the KP is gettig close to Ellsworth, KS on the KP. Have some crossing tore up in town which leaves us one to get to the South side of town and/or go over the K-156 overpass which is the long way around.
Found the tie gang working on the siding at Wolf Siding this morning.

#1-2 Monday night they went back out to Wolf Siding to tie up for the night and then they started working on
Wolf Siding Tue. morning.
#3 Tonight, 28 machines are tied up South of my house, with another 10 a little ways West of them and another 8 are tied up on the elevator track in the West part of town. upkpfan

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#4 Is the next 10 with the 28 to the East or in front of them, as that makes 38 so far.
#5 Is the next 8 on the West side of town for a total of 46 total. There is several more out ahead of these
farther to the East someplace as they came thru last week putting in switch ties and havn't seen them
since.
#6 While taking the last 8 machines pic., a EB CTRN coal train came thru with a surprise on the DPU. upkpfan

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#7 Had a nice new SD70ACe on it. Don't get to many new engines thru here. As they have a slow order thru here,
it wasn't hard to get ahead of it for my last good shot of UP 8790. First 7 pics. were taken in Ellsworth.
#8 Is of UP 8790 at the low road crossing, half way between Ellsworth and Kanopolis. upkpfan

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Nice pictures and coverage Marvin. I'm always glad when they are upgrading the KP----that's just plain a good route. When I was at Kanopolis last month, the switch ties were already lying along the right of way to be installed and were pre-numbered in bundles with the mile post number so the operators would know where to set off the bundles of ties. Thanks for the coverage.
Brian Stevens

Brian,
They just unloaded the bundles of ties in the last 2 weeks. Marv

Hey Marvin,
Great coveraage of the tie gang. Another part of railroading that rarely gets covered by the fans.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

I think 28 machines can be called and army, Marv! With that many, do any of them do more than one specific job or are they THAT specialized?

Jim,
There was 46 machines sitting in 3 different places that night. And yes, there is more that just one machine of a kind. A lot of pairs. For instance, the machine that inserts the new ties under the rail. There was 2 of those as the first one does some and skips some to leave for the second machine to do what the first machine didn't get. It goes faster that way. One machine don't have to do everything like that. How many "pairs" there is, I don't know. Another instance is the swing cranes that pickup the new ties and insert them in the hole where they will go. The machine that pushes the tie in under the rail. Machines that pull the spikes. Yes there is several pairs of machines.
It was 87-89 degrees at about 11:AM when I was there, and there was a guy walking back and forth with a hooded sweat shirt on and insulated coveralls on. He had pants of some type on as the zipper on gthe right side was paert way down and I could see his pants under neath. I couldn't stand anything like that. upkpfan