Nostalgia & History > Maintenance Of Way Speeders and GPS

Recently we used our privately owned and operated Maintenance of Way Speeders for doing a GPS survey in Stockton Calif on the Stockton Terminal And Eastern Railroad. We coordinate with the Railroads before such projects and obtain our own Track Warrants for our operations on their lines. The normal railroad traffic was suspended for two days while we plotted distance of the rails there. We not only measured the main lines but all the sidings and spurs into the different warehouse areas that the ST&E RR provides rail service to. Our Speeders all were previous railroad equipment retired from different railroads, and are now restored to like new condition. There were several older Fairmont speeders and my Canadian CN Rail CBL speeder equipped with a laptop computer using GARMIN mapping software and a GARMIN GPS receiver. We are a Club here in the Sacramento Calif area, one of several that operates on active and abandoned lines we lease. On some excursions on very active Railroad lines we are provided an escort of a Hy-Rail vehicle at the front of the procession, we all have 2 meter HAM communications equipment typically transmitting at 50 Watts for precise communications. We also perform our own MOW on those leased lines to include weed abatement, replacing damaged ties, fixing heat kinks, etc. We have a spray rig set up on a pull trailer that we use to spray the weeds in a 9 foot wide swath. Our Speeders weigh from 700 to 1,300 pounds or more. The spray rig weighs in at over 1,000 pounds and when using it we have two Speeders coupled together for added power and braking. First photo is of our Speeders in the ST&E Railroad yard, second one is my Laptop computer I used along with the GPS receiver to plot the rail lines, third one is of us parked in a residential area in down town Stockton that the tracks run through. As you all reply I will be allowed to post a response and add 3 more photos each time I do that. If you are in the local Sacramento area and want more information about our activities, clubs, or want do a "ride a long" with us please contact me of line as we are not allowed to add web site links here.

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Oh, SHARP!!
Gonna be in Stockton with speeders at Winterail?

Paul Ramer
Cincinnati, OH

Some guys have all the fun. - Tony J.

We will look into putting a Speeder on display for next years Stockton Winterail. We did have one on display in Roseville for the Railfair last year. Several of us took turns attending the car and passing out literature and showing off our photo albums. We have also been on UPN TV-31 Good Day Sacramento show, they did 2 live early morning segments in Stockton, last one was at the ST&E yard. Adding more pictures, one is of a Handcar beautifully restored, a trestle crossing, and a closer photo of the laptop computer inside my Speeder.

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Yes Tony it is a lot of fun! We combine a lot of work with having a good time, for every hour of fun there is also an hour of work we do. Our last work project consisted of replacing numerous ties that were burned and straightening out a section of rail that was out of place due to extreme heat, a heat kink where the rails expand when they get hot in the Summer months. The rails actually break away from the tie plates and will bow inward or out. In one photo you can see where the rail bowed out and we placed large pieces of wood inside that one rail to allow us to get by.

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