AN INGENIOUS TRAIN

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 December 1929, Page 9

AN INGENIOUS TRAIN

TRACK-RENEWAL SYSTEM. For more than a hundred years there has been no change in the method of relaying Britain’s rail tracks, which cover 51,500 rnailes and cost over £13,000,000 annually to maintain and renew. The materials used (rails, chairs, keys, sleepers, and bolts) have been greatly improved in quality and design, but owing to the ever-increas-ing weight of trains the renewal of tracks becomes a subject of primary importance to railways.

The present method of relaying is that rails, chairs, sleepers, and fastenings, weighing something in the neighbourhood of 400 tons for every mile of track, are placed alongside a stretch to be renewed until the relaying gang takes possession and “opens up” the line. The old track is removed from the “road” by hand, loaded into waggons by hand, and discharged at the depots for distribution, for sale, or reuse. The relaying of any length of track means that the new and old materials have to be transferred by hand seven times. Science, however, has come definitely to the aid of the railway engineer in the shape of the latest Morris track-laying system, which is virtually a rail track on a train. At a central depot the new track is assembled in complete units to the length of the rails, and loaded by overhead electric crane on to an ingenious train known as the track-layer. Along the train, at the extreme outside width, runs an outer rail, on which a transporter or train trolley runs from end to end. This transporter conveys a complete length of built-up track from one end of the train to the other, and when it reaches the rear end of the train it is taken over by the track-layer, which consists of a rectangular cantilever steel frame mounted on a bogie truck, one end of the frame projecting beyond the track.

On arrival at the site of the relaying, the first length of old track is

lifted out by the cantilever frame and is passed back to the transporter, because the new track is • run forward on to the projecting end of the cantilever when dropped on to the ballast in proper line and position, the near ends of the rail being in contact with the rails on which the train is standing. ,

In the interval the ballast has been broken up ready for the new rails, and after the joints between the old and new rails have been connected, the train moves forward ready for the next transfer. The cantilever and transporter arc worked electrically from a power van which receives its energy from the stqam engine of the train. The’ tracklayer does most of its work by searchlight during the night, and one-third of a mile of track can be renewed in a night’s work. The track-laying system does not in any way interfere with trains passing on the opposite line, and there is little interference with the services. As soon as the relaying is completed, the track-layer with its transporter is left in a convenient siding and the material waggons return to the depot I for unloading and reloading for the next night. > .