LAYING RAILWAY TRACKS BY ELECTRICITY.

Northland Age, Volume 2, Issue 50, 17 July 1906, Page 8

LAYING RAILWAY TRACKS BY ELECTRICITY.

An interesting portable electric plant is used by the French railways in permanent way construction, and enables track laying to be executed at a much more rapid rate than by the older methods. On a platform-car that can be run either on the rails or on an ordinary road is mounted a vertical steam-engine of 25 horse-power, connected with a dynamo supplying current at 220

volts. There is also a vertical boiler and water tank, and various portable conductors and supports that enable the current to be carried to the tools employed in fixing the rails and packing the sleepers. The current is taken from two wires by small trolleys, and is then led to machine tools, which, with their motors, are mounted on small trucks. Two men are required to work the two machines which set the wood screws holding the rails into the sleepers, and two more arc required to hold the latter in place with crowbars. In this way 19.7 yards of single track can be set with 200 screws in ten minutes, a rate seven times as fast as the same operation can be performed by hand. Following this operation comes the packing or tamping of the broken stone around the sleepers, and there is also an electrical tool for this purpose, four of these usually being in the hands of as many men, while two others supply the ballast. Thus the six men can properly pack a sleeper in broken stone in one minute, while if the material is sand only 35 seconds is required. The apparatus is designed so that it can be operated conveniently from either a siding or from one of a set of double tracks when repairs are being made or new rails being laid on the other set of rails.