Eastern Railroad Discussion > Interesting CSX MoW Equipment question

Around the 9:00pm hour, I saw a series of about 15 - 20 MoW pieces of CSX equipment run by Rockville, MD, heading eastbound.

Can anybody enlighten me on what they were for and/or where they were headed?

Cumberland

Posted from iPhone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/24 19:28 by Cumberland.

It is spring. Flowers are blooming, trees are greening up as well as my lawn. I'm sure this equipment will be performing maintenance of way over many miles of CSX trackage. Rail renewal, tie replacement and surfacing. I'll be performing maintenance of lawn and shrubbery. In my case and CSX's it will be here, there and everywhere on our properties!
Fun to watch when you can get up close and watch, not so much me mowing and trimming. Years ago, a now dearly departed railfan friend and I watched, videoed and, photoed a huge amount of SEPTA track rebuilding and bridge replacements during what was termed "Railworks" when virtually all of the Reading Railroad was rebuilt north of Center City Philadelphia.
Around the same time our company had some west coast folks join us here on the east coast. One of them was a semi-railfan. He gave me a video of what was then a video of a Southern Pacific track gang. they were doing what is still common today. Pulling spikes, removing tie plates (manually) replacing ties, replacing the tie plates (manually) and the respiking of the rails to the new ties. Next there were tie anchors installed and following this were the scarifiers and surfacing machines. Very interesting. Hopefully you can find a location that is accessible where you too can watch all of this mechanized labor will be taking place.
Then take a few moments to imagine how all of this was done before the current machines were built and utilized.
Hopefully someone can tell you exactly where this crew is going. Good luck with that!
Gonut

Sounds like you saw a track gang. Could be a gang that just replaces rail on a curve or a gang that replaces ties. With many old sidings gone these gangs sometimes have to travel several miles just to get to where they need to begin working thus eating into the track time given to actually do their job. There should be a train of M of W flatcars parked somewhere in your area that carries all this equipment. Sometimes it really pays to look at the flatcars. Here is an old C&O flat in M of W service back in '21. Very interesting to watch them load up the train.

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A tie replacement gang. Great bunch of guys!! These gangs have a number. I think this was T5 gang.  I'm not sure how many track gangs they have but it goes from T1 up to ?T8?.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/24 03:07 by CSX2605.

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Nicely illustrated!
Go

Gonut1 Wrote:
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> Nicely illustrated!
> Go

I second on that!

That was very similar to what I saw.

Cumberland

A Tie Gang was moved to Benning Yard in DC on Sunday. Could be them working on the MET sub.

Fire28 Wrote:
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> A Tie Gang was moved to Benning Yard in DC on
> Sunday. Could be them working on the MET sub.

That would fit the timeline.

Cumblerland