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Here's a bullhead question for you. Before I head out to Long Marston Station site, where the (bullhead) rails are still in the road with a vernier caliper, does anyone know offhand the correct flangeway gap where a check rail was used at crossings? I'm looking for check rail chairs from C&L and currently considering whether to use 0.8mm or 1mm.
Yes, a lot of rail is still produced and finished at Scunthorpe - the Rail Service Centre lines on the site have been busy with track wagon (empty and loaded) each time I have been on the excellent tours of the site.
Other member might be interested in this paper published on Linkedin describing the rail production at Scunthorpe. It's nothing to do with me BTW although I have seen some parts of it elsewhere.
I’ll describe how we turn the 7+ metre lump of cast steel bloom from my previous article into the rail which we can recognise. This post may be a little longer than most as there is a lot to cram in, but should take around 10 minutes to read - perfect for that much needed coffee breal.
The CWR would first end with breather switches into jointed track. Then junction fishplates are available to join dissimilar track types together. Even brand new and part worn rails of the same type need junction plates to join newly relaid and older existing lengths together.
In some places, it’s common for bullhead to be welded to flat bottom 113A. It’s even possible to buy transition rails where one end is bullhead and the other end is flat bottom 113A. Transition rails are normally used to join 113A and UIC60 rails.
These five photos show some transition rails, bullhead rail welded to a flat bottom 113A rail and fishplates joining bullhead rail to flat bottom 113A rail.
Yes welding the BH/FB joint is a good idea as it reduces the risk of failure and having to find a set of FB/BH junction plates at 3am on a sleety February morning. You are allowed 30m of welded rail on the jointed side of an adjustment switch.
I once had a graduate idiot engineer from Railtrack complain that I had finished a specified CWR concrete relaying job with 30' of new bullhead on hardwood sleepers. The little auto-erotic thought that I should have finished the job with an insulated new flat bottom to worn bullhead joint off the back of an S&C crossing. I can only assume that he really hated the local maintenance supervisor. Would have served the little ******* right if I had followed his specification to the yard, as he refused to issue a variation order when I pointed out that the mileage he had given for this plain line relay went through and a 100 yards past the double junction I had ended the job at.
Another strange one was a job that relayed part of a length of LNER 110lb flat bottom rail track this rail has a wider foot than 113A, in the good old days the welders would have filed out a mould to fit so the joint could be welded. But by the time this job was done that sort of thing was not detailed in the standards and so not allowed as being unsafe. So I cut out the twenty year old similar home made junction welds at the end of the length of 113A track we were starting off as 30' lengths and carried them forward as if they were transition rails and reused them. As apparently no one had thought to ban that as a practice.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Junction plates join rails of dissimilar sections.
Lift plates join rails of the same section but with different amounts of wear.
Lift and junction plates are used to join usually new rails of one section to worn rails of another.
Insulated lift and junction plates are used to get your own back on maintainers you dislike.
If you really hate in local maintainers give them something unusual like junction and lift plates between LMS113lb flat bottom and GWR 97 1/2 lb bullhead, that are only available as Permalli plywood plates, they will then be changing them weekly for ever more. Maahaaawhaaa.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Another strange one was a job that relayed part of a length of LNER 110lb flat bottom rail track this rail has a wider foot than 113A, in the good old days the welders would have filed out a mould to fit so the joint could be welded. But by the time this job was done that sort of thing was not detailed in the standards and so not allowed as being unsafe. So I cut out the twenty year old similar home made junction welds at the end of the length of 113A track we were starting off as 30' lengths and carried them forward as if they were transition rails and reused them. As apparently no one had thought to ban that as a practice.
Insulated lift and junction plates are used to get your own back on maintainers you dislike.
If you really hate in local maintainers give them something unusual like junction and lift plates between LMS113lb flat bottom and GWR 97 1/2 lb bullhead, that are only available as Permalli plywood plates, they will then be changing them weekly for ever more. Maahaaawhaaa.
