These two machines are on the tracks of the Housatonic RR and made a brief stop alongside the platform at the Danbury Railway Museum. I didn't have time for taking as many pictures as I would have liked. I believe these are used for pulling ties or rails. Most likely, several of you can give us a better description of their use. [ 28 January 2002, 03:46: Message edited by: Peirce ]
Peirce, The first one is eiter a Tie puller or spike puller or a spiker which puts spikes in. The crane second one is a tie crane its lacking a tie wagon but its what possitions ties in places or picks them up to take then to another location...
Cool! Here's one from the UK! One of the fun things about privatisation is that things that used to be one corporate colour (in this case, yellow) are now lots of different corporate colours! This is a rather fetching purple tamper owned by track maintainence co. GTRM. At Bescot (Birmingham) on the 1st July. [ 25. November 2002, 21:46: Message edited by: Martyn Read ]
Saw this Tamper a few years ago at Carnforth in the north west of England [ 24. November 2002, 18:40: Message edited by: Alan ]
Martyn, Alan, Those look like luxury models. Contrast this other extreme. Many of the people on my tours remember this type from the old movies. [ 28 January 2002, 21:55: Message edited by: Peirce ]
Peirce, I used to ride on an old pumper like that for fun. I don't see the brake handle on it though. This one seems to have the foot peddle and brake shoes, so must be a later model.
The lowly Burro Crane. (Reposted from the original thread that started this forum.) How many varieties of tasks were these little guys called on to do? This one is at the Danbury Railway Museum. [ 02. April 2004, 01:34: Message edited by: Peirce ]
Sorry Peirce. That pic got accidentally deleted from my ftp. I must look for the pic in my box of pics and rescan it. In the meantime, here is an interesting little crane. The boom actually detaches (It is lite) and is stored in the gondola in front of it. Russ Hoffman Valley RR
Russ sent this picture to me to post for him. This is the double-ended crane built for the New York Central for working in the tunnels serving Grand Central Terminal. It is now at the Danbury Railway Museum. I moved this image to a better location so it could be linked and displayed. Peirce [ 29 January 2002, 18:55: Message edited by: Peirce ]
You will notice two unique features on this crane--it is double ended and the booms are short. It was designed to operate in the tunnels serving Grand Central Terminal. It is my understanding, Two of these units were ordered and delivered. A third one was supposedly planned, but, so far as I have been able to determine, never built. The one in this picture is the only one surviving. A story that came with this unit is that it was originally named "Wellington." As the story goes, there was a NYC employee named Wellington, for whom it was named. This job title was Wreck Master.
Another reason for the double end, is that the crane could work from either side of a wreck without having to rotate 180 degrees. The crane booms on this one could swing like old time derricks where only the boom swings, which enabled it to work in a confined space. The added weight of this cab portion was often enough to keep it from tipping over, even without the out-rigger support arms. When this kind of crane was used up in the mountains, it was for the same reasons. A standard 250 ton BIG HOOK had to have the room to rotate, yet clear the over-hang of the rear of the hoisting cab. These big tunnel cranes also were equipped with "walking engines" that allowed them to move along the rails under their own power. There were a few of the big single boom cranes that could "walk", but often they would strip the gears, and still had to be pushed or pulled into position by another engine. All cranes are fastenating to watch at work.
It looks like I finally was able to set up new links to all my pictures in this thread. In doing so I moved to still another hosting site, this time one that charges a small annual fee. They do seem a lot more staple than the free sites, however. Sometime later: Not only is my present imaging service more staple, it still offers services that are being eliminated on many of the free sites, [ 21. July 2002, 15:41: Message edited by: Peirce ]
An engineering test car, belonging to Metro North, caught passing through the South Norwalk, CT, station.
Here is one from England. I caught these on November 11th through the window of the Eurostar. I am not sure the location, except somewhere between London and the Chunnel, on the way to Paris. [ 10. February 2004, 16:56: Message edited by: Peirce ]
Those Railtrack hoppers are known as "Autoballasters", one vehicle in the rake has a generator on it, and it has powered and controllable drop doors, so as the train rolls slowly by, a guy on the ground can control exactly how much ballast is dropped, and in which direction, and from which outlet, it makes the ballasting proceedure much faster and more precise. The line they are being used on is the first section of the new high speed line being built to the tunnel, currently the Eurostars run on the 750v DC third rail "classic" line from London to the tunnel, and are limited to 100mph on that route. The new line will be cleared for TGV speeds (186mph+) and has 25kv AC overhead electrification (you can see a mast for that in your pic) The first section (coming along nicely!) will take the line from the tunnel to the outskirts of South East London, the second phase (just being started) will take the line under the River Thames and along the north bank through Stratford to reach a new Eurostar terminal at a much enlarged St Pancras station on the North side of central London.
That is good news. In an earlier news story, if I remember it correctly, it was noted the new trackage will take another 30 minutes off the London-to-Paris run. I also heard, but can't confirm, that there are plans to extend the high speed track to Birmingham and other cities. Any subsance to that?
There have been many suggestions so far, one of the bids for the East Coast main line franchise (Kings Cross to Leeds, York, Newcastle, Edinburgh) included a newbuild high speed line for a big section of the route, thus freeing capacity on the rest of it. Eurostars are cleared to Leeds and York already though as GNER (current ECML franchise holder) has some on lease, so services could reverse at St Pancras and go north at least some of the way, though only at 125mph. There are other high speed plans about, but I don't know that many are very far ahead. Virgin's West Coast services were due to increase from 110mph to 140mph with new tilting trains and some trackwork, but this has been cut back to 125mph for the forseeable future due seemingly to Railtrack mishandling the project Anyhow, here's some more from over here! This is another pic of an Autoballaster, this shows the generator equipped one, complete with a roof to protect it when being loaded! These are side tipping ballast layers, also individually controllable and self powered (sorry, the generator one was at the other end of the set on these ) I've also updated my pic earlier in the thread which had a broken link.
