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Western Railroad Discussion > Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern RailwayDate: 09/20/17 20:36 Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: webmaster Late last month and through Labor Day week my son Mason, myself, and a friend of ours named Lary Shaffer spent 11 days rebuilding a damaged railroad crossing on the Nevada Northern Railway in Ely, Nevada. We were also joined by Martin Caestecker who helped us with the project for three days over Labor Day weekend. The story is about five years ago a brush fire was ignited by a shooter who was using a bbq propane canister as a target. The bottle exploded and a fire burned on the High Line. BLM dispatched a fire dozer to join the battle. The truck crossed at Industrial Way and in the process the it bottomed out and tore up the crossing. From my understanding BLM paid a good amount of money to repair the track, but Mark Bassett the railroad's director did not view the repair as a priority and the crossing remained broken. Trains did not use the track often and there were more pressing needs on the railroad
My son Mason had been eying the project for a number of years and this year decided the time had come to replace it. Mason is a mechanical engineering student and although this is a civil engineering project, he was interested in tackling the project. He recruited Lary Shafer a retired University professor from SUNY Plattsburgh to come give us a hand. Last Spring I was visiting with Martin Caestecker at the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum and he volunteered to come up and give us a hand for a weekend. We had never done railroad work like this so Mason reached out to Michael McGinley (railstiesballast on Trainorders) for advice on how to carry out the project. Mike's input was invaluable and without his advice we would have not been able to finish the project. I documented the job in both video and stills throughout the project. I will begin with a short compilation video with music composed by my daughter. Todd Clark Canyon Country, CA Trainorders.com You must be a registered subscriber to watch videos. Join Today! Date: 09/20/17 20:47 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: webmaster Image 1: Damaged crossing before we started
Image 2: Measuring super elevation before we tore up the track. We did not realize until we visited the site that the crossing was on a curve and required about 1/2 inch of superelevation. Image 3: The track on this line is 70 pound to the yard rail with a joint in the center of the crossing. We dug out some spare 90 pound rail in the yard and carted it out behind a motorcar. Todd Clark Canyon Country, CA Trainorders.com    Date: 09/20/17 20:57 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: webmaster Image 1: The demolition begins as Mason pulls the spikes.
Image 2: None of us had ever used a backhoe before, but Henry the mechanical chief for the railroad gave us a quick lesson on how it worked. We drove the machine down Highway 93 and with some practice Lary and I got pretty good at using it. This machine turned out to be the most useful piece of equipment for the project. We used it for excavating, lifting rail, moving ties, positioning track, and moving ballast. Image 3: While we got the hang of using the backhoe we were far from experts with it so we finished up the digging using a Makita electric hammer for cleaning up the edges and manual shovels for moving the dirt out. We had to pull a total of 66 feet of track as the lowboy had damaged quite a bit more track beyond the road. Todd Clark Canyon Country, CA Trainorders.com    Date: 09/20/17 21:07 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: webmaster Image 1: Once dug out we put down some carpet to prevent mud from coming up. The ground is quite hard here and this part of the region is dotted with rock quarries.
Image 2: Next came the laying of ballast. Image 3: Lary and Mason taking a breather. We worked from 8am until 6pm each day with occasional breaks. Todd Clark Canyon Country, CA Trainorders.com    Date: 09/20/17 21:15 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: webmaster Image 1: Ties are brought out.
Image 2: We put new industrial grade ties down and then salvaged a handful of good ties. Image 3: We started bolting in the replacement rail. Todd Clark Canyon Country, CA Trainorders.com    Date: 09/20/17 21:21 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: webmaster Image 1: Mason using a hydraulic drill to bore holes for the joint bars. Not seen in photos, but in the video you will see a photo of Lary watering down the rail. As the day warmed the track expanded and no longer fit together. My solution was to water the rail in an effort to cool it. It took about 30 minutes, but the rail shrunk enough to come together.
Image 2: Oiling the joint bars to lubricate expansion. Todd Clark Canyon Country, CA Trainorders.com   Date: 09/20/17 21:37 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: webmaster After the joints were in place the hydraulic unit broke down and after a waste day of trying to get it to work we rounded up an pneumatic spike driver and rented an air compressor from the local CAT dealer. We were loaned Aaron, a productive Nevada Northern track maintenance worker for two days who proved to be invaluable. Aaron was a hard worker and did much of the spiking and tamping.
Image 1: Aaron spiking Image 2: Spiking the curve was a curious ordeal. To get the curve I used a string on the following undisturbed 66 feet of track and found the curve projected out 4 inch. I marked the ties showing where the rail was to be placed and using bars we held the rail in place while we spiked. Well. that did not go as planned as when we released the bars the track snapped back straight. Oh crap what next. Mason phoned Mike and he told us this is to be expected and told us to yank the track back using machinery or bars. We took the tractor chained the rail and yanked it back and left it there for a couple of days while we finished spiking and tamping. Image 3: Curve is about where it needs to be. Todd Clark Canyon Country, CA Trainorders.com    Date: 09/20/17 21:45 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: webmaster Tamping was difficult without our hydraulic tamper. We took a chisel bit on our Makita hammer and ground it flatter so it could tamp ballast under the track. The tamping process involves jacking up the track and shoving ballast under the ties. Then using various tools rock is driven under the ties in an effort to raise the level. Care has to be taken to only place ballast on the ends of the ties because otherwise the track will be high centered and place tremendous loads, eventually breaking the tie. Not enough tamping and the track will sink. The Makita did sort of ok, but it needed a wider surface for jamming the rock. We used a combination of hand tools and power tools.
Todd Clark Canyon Country, CA Trainorders.com    Date: 09/20/17 21:54 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: webmaster Image 1: Track is completed and Mason drives the motorcar across the new crossing.
Image 2: Final task is installing the road crossing. Mark did not want to fork out to place timber over the entire crossing, but he did give us 4 pieces of lumber to cover the rail edges. The night before Lary and Mason worked until 1am in the shops to affix two additional boards to enable the timber to butt up closer to the outside of the rails. Image 3: It was impossible to drive the lag bolts by hand so since the SD9 was being brought out on the final day for a roll over test an impact wrench was hooked up to the locomotive air line. Todd Clark Canyon Country, CA Trainorders.com    Date: 09/20/17 22:05 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: webmaster Image 1: Road ballast is shoveled around the crossing by Aaron.
Image 2: Final roll over test of the crossing. I was not confident our tamping was as good as it could be because of our equipment problem, but the crossing appeared to hold up well under the weight of the SD9. That concludes our project. In all it took 9 days of work to complete. We took one day off mid way through where we visited Great Basin National Park and took a handcar trip on the High Line where the excitement of the trip was coming across 24 rattlesnakes over a 3.5 mile section between H4 and the end of the line. It was a real creepy run, especially through the rock cut where at one point we had rattlesnakes at eye level to the sides and in the center of the track. If you enjoyed my daughter's music we have another video that can viewed on Mason's Kalamazoo website: http://www.kalamazoomfg.com/store/ Note to shortlines in the west, we trade track work for handcar access. Todd Clark Canyon Country, CA Trainorders.com   Date: 09/20/17 23:10 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: stash Wonderful video Todd.
Posted from Android Date: 09/20/17 23:16 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: zephyrus Nice job! You know, we got some tracklaying to do in Portola.....
Z Date: 09/20/17 23:25 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: doge_of_pocopson Impressive work -- with a result that you can see and be proud of. The video and photos are impressive as well -- down to the original music by Miranda Clark!
Thank you for this. B Date: 09/21/17 04:45 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: KimHeusel Great documentary Todd. You and your wife have raised a couple of talented kids.
Kim Heusel Date: 09/21/17 06:21 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: Bob3985 Thanks for the documentary Todd. Mason is to be commended for taking on this project and for all who chipped in to help.
Bob Krieger Cheyenne, WY Date: 09/21/17 07:42 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: Arkeytek Thanks for the story, impressive work. You forgot to mention that Martin is bowtie here on Trainorders.
Date: 09/21/17 09:23 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: funnelfan Great job. Getting snagged crossings like that is not unusual in farm country. The farmers are also quick to call it in so they hope to avoid the cost of a derailment cleanup.
Ted Curphey Ontario, OR Date: 09/21/17 10:03 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: DRGW5502 Nicely done.
Date: 09/21/17 10:20 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: TCnR Great story, serious amount of work for a good cause.
Date: 09/21/17 10:23 Re: Rebuilding Industrial Way on Nevada Northern Railway Author: railpix What a way to go! Todd, this whole show (not to mention the hard work!) is really worthy of a Winterail presentation! And you definitely should have your daughter do the background music too.
Congratulations on a job well done! |