Sandstone and Termite

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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by gregh » Fri Aug 21, 2020 5:11 am

Had a few friends around for a run in the windy weather here.

Keith brought his NSWR CPH railmotor and parcels van. Here it is at Lilyvale
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My 'small' diesel based on a BHP D9 (I think)
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the railmotor at Sandstone
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Unloading is in progress at Sandstone goods shed
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My diesel passes Lilyvale St Hebel's church
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Geof was here too with his big Queensland Railways diesel but I didn't get any good pics. (sorry Geof)
A fun day until the wind got too much and we had to retreat inside for coffee and chat.
That's what GR is all about!


And a short video

Greg from downunder.
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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by ge_rik » Fri Aug 21, 2020 7:39 am

The video may be short but the shots you got are really good, Greg. Looks like you were using a long lens to get some interesting new angles. Great stuff!

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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by FWLR » Fri Aug 21, 2020 9:49 am

Love your clip going over the bridge Greg...Brilliant. :thumbright:

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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by Jimmyb » Fri Aug 21, 2020 11:27 am

Geoff, the video is great along with the trains, however (and I have seen it in your other videos) the rocks are just fantastic, I assume they are natural in your garden.

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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by gregh » Sun Aug 23, 2020 6:00 am

Jimmyb wrote: โ†‘Fri Aug 21, 2020 11:27 am Geoff, the video is great along with the trains, however (and I have seen it in your other videos) the rocks are just fantastic, I assume they are natural in your garden.
Thanks for the comment and yes the rocks are real and natural.
(BTW I am Greg - Geof is my friend with the blue diesel in the video).
Greg from downunder.
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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by Jimmyb » Sun Aug 23, 2020 9:20 am

gregh wrote: โ†‘Sun Aug 23, 2020 6:00 am
Jimmyb wrote: โ†‘Fri Aug 21, 2020 11:27 am Geoff, the video is great along with the trains, however (and I have seen it in your other videos) the rocks are just fantastic, I assume they are natural in your garden.
Thanks for the comment and yes the rocks are real and natural.
(BTW I am Greg - Geof is my friend with the blue diesel in the video).
Greg, apologies for my confusion, I blame my age :)

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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by Old Man Aaron » Wed Aug 26, 2020 9:51 am

Always a pleasure to see your line in operation, Greg.
Regards,
Aaron - Scum Class Works

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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by gregh » Sun Aug 30, 2020 8:46 am

I just HATE doing maintenance!!! BUT.....

I make most of my own turnouts from brass rail nailed to treated pine sleepers.
But after nearly 20 years โ€˜on the groundโ€™ some of them are rotting. The worst ones are in an area where rain water โ€˜poolsโ€™ after heavy rain with nowhere to runoff. I originally ballasted the turnouts and track with concrete and small gravel. So the sleepers were wet a lot of the time. (Other turnouts not on the ground are still as good as new).

I have tended to ignore the problem until finally the โ€˜mainโ€™ sleeper on which the blades pivot rotted out. Then they didnโ€™t work any more!
storm water.jpg
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So it was time to do some maintenance.
Hereโ€™s a pic of the first one I removed.
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I was a case of replacing the sleepers one at a time to keep the geometry โ€˜more or lessโ€™ correct. Takes more time than building them in the first place. My typical track uses 4 nickel-plated steel nails per sleeper (15mm long) bent over the rail foot.
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But many of the sleepers on a turnout donโ€™t have room for nails on both sides of the rail, so where this happens, I epoxy the single nail to the rail and sleeper.
(Note that my frogs are made from styrene.)

After finishing all that, I โ€˜paintedโ€™ the undersides of the sleepers with waterproof PVA glue, and laid a bit of thin concrete for it to sit on. I am not going to use any ballast this time, so the water can run between the sleepers!
I also painted the nails to try and slow their rusting.

A second turnout was done similarly. I fixed the poor drainage by making very low culverts under the 2 tracks that form the โ€˜damsโ€™.
finished.JPG
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If they last 20 years again, they will outlast my modelling days!
Greg from downunder.
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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by FWLR » Sun Aug 30, 2020 8:51 am

Great job done there Greg. It did look to be one heck of a job, but it really does look great now and like you say, will last a good few decades and more now....

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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by ge_rik » Sun Aug 30, 2020 8:53 am

20 years survival of wooden sleepered track is impressive in normal conditions, but being regularly soaked is amazing! I remember you once saying that Sydney gets more rainfall than London, which really surprised me.

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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by philipy » Sun Aug 30, 2020 9:33 am

Good job, Greg. From the photo is hard to tell which are the renewed ones if we didn't know.

Interesting that your frogs are styrene, and clearly haven't worn significantly with 20 years use. Quite surprising.
Philip

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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by gregh » Mon Aug 31, 2020 4:56 am

philipy wrote: โ†‘Sun Aug 30, 2020 9:33 am Interesting that your frogs are styrene, and clearly haven't worn significantly with 20 years use. Quite surprising.
Well there's not really a lot to wear them on our models. I have no heavy steamies with metal wheels, all my wagons have plastic wheels. And the guard/check rails should keep wheels away from the actual frog 'point' anyhow.
A related aspect is that in our models, there is no need for the check rails adjacent to the frog. (dotted yellow lines in pic)
turnout capt.jpg
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I assume in the real word they provide extra strength. In our models they perform no 'check' type function to force the wheels away from the frog.
So in my later turnouts I left them off.
The check rails adjacent to the outside running rails are the important ones.
Greg from downunder.
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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by Soar Valley Light » Mon Aug 31, 2020 8:12 pm

Nice work Greg, it's not often a bit of retimbering ends up in culvert construction!

You make an interesting point (pardon the pun!) about the rails alongside the crossing vee. In the construction of built up crossings (i.e. those assembled with bolts through the rails suitably held at the right distance apart by spacer blocks) the point and splice rail (forming the vee) were bolted together, the rails leading up to the vee from the front were bent and extended alongside the vee to allow the vee and the rails in front of them to be held in the correct alignment to each other. As far as I'm aware that was the only function of the wings and I'm not aware they performed any 'checking' purpose under normal circumstances. As you quite correctly say, it's the check rails opposite the crossing which are vital for the purposes of keeping the flanges on the right side of the vee. The distance from the back of the this check rail to the gauge face of the crossing nose is arguably the most vital dimension on a turnout of any gauge or scale.

The thing I'd never considered was that these wings were perpetuated in cast monobloc crossings. The casting is only about a quarter the thickness of a rail but it is there nonetheless, forming a flangeway of similar size to a grooved rail used in tramway construction. The existence of a flangeway provides an opportunity for an obstruction to occur, with potentially disasterous repercussions, so why perpetuate it in the cast crossing design? I don't have an answer but I shall be asking questions at work to see if I can find out why this was done.

As previously stated in another thread, there's always something new for those of us who find permanent way fascinating. :roll: :mrgreen:

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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by gregh » Tue Sep 01, 2020 4:43 am

That is an interesting Reply Andrew. Thanks for the info. Despite sitting in the same room as the track Engineers for a few years I never thought to ask about wing rails either.
I wonder if their continued use in monobloc turnouts is an example of just blindly following past practice without wondering WHY?
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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by GTB » Wed Sep 02, 2020 10:15 am

gregh wrote: โ†‘Tue Sep 01, 2020 4:43 am That is an interesting Reply Andrew. Thanks for the info. Despite sitting in the same room as the track Engineers for a few years I never thought to ask about wing rails either.
I wonder if their continued use in monobloc turnouts is an example of just blindly following past practice without wondering WHY?
FWIW....

It's my understanding that both check rails and wing rails have a function in a conventional turnout and it depends on which direction the wheel is passing through the V-crossing.

Check rails are needed only in the facing direction and are there to guide the wheel set so the wheel flange doesn't hit the nose of the V, or go through the wrong flangeway, with the usual spectacular, but undesirable results.

Wing rails perform a more obscure purpose in the trailing direction and are used to guide the wheel so the outer part of the tread is properly supported through the throat of the v-crossing as it passes from the nose of the crossing to the knee of the wing rail.

The attached scans are how the function of the wing rail is explained in the 1947 edition of the VRI (Victorian Railways Institute) 'Permanent Way Correspondence Course' books, which was used for teaching track gang labourers who aspired to become gangers.

Wing rails1.jpg
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Wing rails2.jpg
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Both volumes of the VRI course text can be downloaded as scans from Mark Bau's website for anyone interested, there's a lot of general information in there, although most is VR specific. The full scan links are at the top of the following page.

http://www.victorianrailways.net/infast ... thome.html

Regards,
Graeme

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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by Soar Valley Light » Wed Sep 02, 2020 11:22 am

Hello Graham,

Thanks for sharing that information. It makes perfect sense. The greater the surface area of contact between wheel and rail the less the wear will be on the reduced section rail of the crossing vee, it will also reduce the amount of wear on the knuckle of the wing rail. Both these are significant issues in heavily trafficked turnouts, especially in these days of restricted access to weld repair crossings.

Every day's a school day on the railway!

All the best,

Andrew
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"'cause I can't manage on three gaffer!"

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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by ge_rik » Wed Sep 02, 2020 12:29 pm

Of course, you could always do away with frogs entirely, as with Greg's swivelling points or this sliding point on the Snaefell Mountain Railway. I assume the point was needed to allow for continuity with the Fell third rail.
V Bradley Collection 4-26 30-Sept-1964 IOM Snaefell MR Laxey sliding turnout looking up with railcar No1 approaching Neg No 8166.jpg
V Bradley Collection 4-26 30-Sept-1964 IOM Snaefell MR Laxey sliding turnout looking up with railcar No1 approaching Neg No 8166.jpg (186.79 KiB) Viewed 8559 times
(Source: NGRS Vic Bradley Collection - 30/9/1964)

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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by Peter Butler » Wed Sep 02, 2020 1:40 pm

That's a clever bit of mechanical engineering with four sections operated from one lever but throwing at different lengths simultaneously. I imagine the tram operator/guard would have to do this on demand?
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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by gregh » Fri Sep 18, 2020 7:04 am

GTB wrote: โ†‘Wed Sep 02, 2020 10:15 am
FWIW....

It's my understanding that both check rails and wing rails have a function in a conventional turnout and it depends on which direction the wheel is passing through the V-crossing.

Check rails are needed only in the facing direction and are there to guide the wheel set so the wheel flange doesn't hit the nose of the V, or go through the wrong flangeway, with the usual spectacular, but undesirable results.

Wing rails perform a more obscure purpose in the trailing direction and are used to guide the wheel so the outer part of the tread is properly supported through the throat of the v-crossing as it passes from the nose of the crossing to the knee of the wing rail.

The attached scans are how the function of the wing rail is explained in the 1947 edition of the VRI (Victorian Railways Institute) 'Permanent Way Correspondence Course' books, which was used for teaching track gang labourers who aspired to become gangers.

Both volumes of the VRI course text can be downloaded as scans from Mark Bau's website for anyone interested, there's a lot of general information in there, although most is VR specific. The full scan links are at the top of the following page.

Regards,
Graeme
That's very interesting Graeme. Thanks for taking the time to explain. (sorry I took so long to reply.)
Greg from downunder.
The Sandstone & Termite's website: https://members.optusnet.com.au/satr/satr.htm

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Re: Sandstone and Termite

Post by gregh » Sun Sep 20, 2020 1:05 am

Springtime is arriving down under, so four of us had a train run. And when the showers started we retired inside, had a good chat and a bit of a 'feast'.
Just as a reminder, all the trains are scratchbuilt and radio controlled.
This is my tram style loco built on a Hartland Mack motor block, hauling Mark's sugar cane train, on the big trestle.
The background shows the Bird of Paradise flowers.
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Geof's model of a Queensland DH class shunts at Sandstone station
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My Lexie loco is actually a cadbury purple colour but shows more blue in the photo. It matches the wisteria nicely. It's built on a Piko motor block.
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and there is a short video....

Greg from downunder.
The Sandstone & Termite's website: https://members.optusnet.com.au/satr/satr.htm

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