[PRCo] Re: Great stop motion movie of track replacement

[Phil Craig]

Fred:
 
Re:
" Might the rails not have been in proper gauge or might it have been the equipment they were running on it, i.e. the Boeing cars."
The cuprits that have worn out the special work might be today's Breda-built LRVs, which are heavier than the ill-stared Boeing-Vertol LRVs and have been beating up the track throughout the Muni Metro system since they first arrived over 10 years ago to begin the replacement of the Boeing-Vertol cars. The Breda cars are such lard-butts that you can feel the impact-generated vibrations through your feet while standing on the sidewalk at the intersection of Market and Church Streets, where they clatter though the diamond crossings of the J-Church line with the F-Market & Wharves streetcar line.
 
I agree with your point about street railway track set in a massed concrete pour.  Apparently SF Muni is able to ignore stray currents, which encassing the rails in a rubber boot - as you suggest - would mitigate that problem as well as result in much quieter LRV/streetcar operations.
 
Phil Craig 

--- On Fri, 10/15/10, Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net> wrote:

From: Fred Schneider <fwschneider at comcast.net>
Subject: Great stop motion movie of track replacement
To: "Mike Hermesky" <mjh007 at verizon.net>, "John Bromley" <johnfbromley at rogers.com>, "Russ Jackson" <rejmhj at netzero.net>, "John Garrick" <jrgnls at verizon.net>, Pittsburgh-Railways at Dementia.Org, "Phillip G. Craig" <philgcraig204 at yahoo.com>
Date: Friday, October 15, 2010, 2:04 PM



This is a most fascinating video of the replacement of the trackage at 30th and Church Streets in San Francisco over a period of 3.5 days compressed into 12 minutes.   It was Dwight Long who drew it to my attention.


Now if you think this is a lot of work ... remember what we used to do when our transit companies were privately owned and didn't make money if the cars didn't run.   They couldn't afford to shut down a route and run shuttle buses for three days just to replace an intersection.   This kid of work used to be done under traffic.   Perhaps the most impressive job in the past was the the rebuilding of the intersection of King St., Queen St. and Roncesvalles Avenue in Toronto that was a grand union with an extra pair of tracks ... five pairs of tracks into the intersection.   All of the replacement track was all cut and assembled in a factory to make sure it fit, marked, then disassembled and moved to the site.   The actual job was done from the time the service shut down around midnight until it reopened the next morning around 5 AM.     


My thoughts about the San Francisco job?   Poured concrete around rail will be terribly noisy.   There are better ways today such as first  imbedding the rail in rubber and then pouring the concrete around the rubber.  


I am also questioning why gauge bars were not used in lieu of wooden ties?


And John...    Do you understand now what a switch is?   Since you are new to this, there were two kinds ... single point where the flange on one wheel rode behind or on the moving point and just guided the other side on a fixed point.   The other switch is like railroad design ... both points are moveable ... much better for higher speed operation in streets ... much more common in Europe and gaining in acceptance in the USA today.  


Most of the people on this list, John, probably understand that 30th and Church used to be the end of the Church Street line in San Francisco.  Cars came up Church to 30th and wyed to turn them and then headed back downtown.   In 1993 it was extended to from 30th St., three miles to Balboa Park to avoid a much more circuitous route to the car house.   I guess I am personally questioning why that track job lasted only 17 years?   Might the rails not have been in proper gauge or might it have been the equipment they were running on it, i.e. the Boeing cars?



http://vimeo.com/15780202