Seashore Trolley Museum's Main Line uses a lot of 85 lb. rail because it was a B&M standard and we could often get it free. Today that's really light, even for light-rail transit. Modern heavy duty track is almost all welded with rail between 115 lb/yard and 136 lb. So I'll post pictures of items of potential modeling interest as they catch my eye. Others welcome.
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Side view of a sharp angle (maybe #4) bolted frog in (I think) 80 lb.
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Same frog disassembled for cleanout and 1 1/8 inch bolts instead of the 7/8" our predecessors used.
The flat bars with punched hooks are called Hook Plates. They're often seen in older turnouts.
Very interesting James. Thanks for the pictures and how they work.
Jerry
James, thanks for the pictures.
I've been wondering what kind of track work you've been doing.
Old track can be facinating. Any year markings on them?
Quote from: KentuckySouthern on May 11, 2026, 08:07:11 AMOld track can be facinating. Any year markings on them?
The rails are bent and drilled but otherwise I don't see marks. The 5 blocks that space the points and wing rails have
RACOR cast into them. Ramapo Foundry was bought by American Brake Shoe in 1922. The closest I can come to a date is they were using the RACOR trade name by 1930 and we installed the frog in the 1980s. These days RACOR is owned by voestalpine Railway Systems.
James,
Very nice photos of the old track work. I found myself daydreaming about all the steam locos that passed over those rails.
Thanks for sharing them with us.
Tom.
Quote from: ACL1504 on May 13, 2026, 01:54:22 PMVery nice photos of the old track work. I found myself daydreaming about all the steam locos that passed over those rails.
Thank you, Tom. That frog has a sharp enough angle (#4 or maybe a little sharper) that I'm pretty sure it only carried trolley cars, but some people daydream about them too...
Here's a view of the trolley #4 angle point/mate double slip switch earlier in the project.
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We're using a small excavator with a bucket narrow enough to work between timbers. Here we and it have removed the really bad switch timbers and a couple of new ones have been placed. The little Track Jack lower left has raised the castings enough that ties can go in and out with a minimum of excavation.
If you look closely, you may spot a couple of Gauge Rods near the righthand edge. These steel items attach to the base of the rail. They're used when the gauge needs to be held (in or out) when the ties or timbers can't. They're supposed to be temporary but some in our yards have been there longer than I've lived in my present house.
Quote from: jbvb on May 14, 2026, 11:37:35 AMHere's a view of the trolley #4 angle point/mate double slip switch earlier in the project.
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We're using a small excavator with a bucket narrow enough to work between timbers. Here we and it have removed the really bad switch timbers and a couple of new ones have been placed. The little Track Jack lower left has raised the castings enough that ties can go in and out with a minimum of excavation.
If you look closely, you may spot a couple of Gauge Rods near the righthand edge. These steel items attach to the base of the rail. They're used when the gauge needs to be held (in or out) when the ties or timbers can't. They're supposed to be temporary but some in our yards have been there longer than I've lived in my present house.
For the record, James is not the original occupant of his 200+ year old historic house. :-)
dave
Quote from: deemery on May 14, 2026, 12:01:22 PMFor the record, James is not the original occupant of his 200+ year old historic house. :-)
But I did move to this house during the S&L Crisis.
Here's our Track Dept. building a #4 switch out-of-place. We made a crib of old rail on timbers so we didn't have to work on our knees. We laid out the switch timbers, placed the two stock rails (outside edges) and bent the left stock rail. Then we placed the two closure rails, bending the left one. Then we assembled the frog (ex-B&M, looks like another RACOR bolted model) to the closure rails.
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The volunteer on the left is making bolt holes for the RH guardrail with our modern gasoline rail drill. Middle volunteer is testing the fit of a track bolt in one of the cast blocks that space the guardrail away from the running rail. One side of the guardrail's base was planed off at the factory so it could go close enough to the running rail.
You can see the tie plates that protect the ties from wear by a moving rail base. Also rail anchors clipped around the base of the running rail to keep it from sliding fore & aft under traffic. We started spiking with the straight stock rail. Everything else will be gauged from it.
And then you'll use a crane to move the pre-assembled switch into location?
dave
Yes. Here's our little Pettibone MK-36 rough terrain crane all set up at twilight. It's ready to lift the next morning. We'd done our best to estimate the weight of the partial turnouts, and the lifts went smoothly. Good thing, because our Shop wasn't connected to the railroad for a week before this point, and for three weeks afterward.
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Here's a closeup of the frog we used for this turnout:
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It's newer and intended for much heavier traffic than the frog in the Double Slip shown above. The diamond shape is rail bent around a cast manganese steel insert. Manganese steel is very tough, so here it handles all the major wearing surfaces.
Last but not least, our Western-Cullen-Hayes manual rail bender:
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Freight railroad workers rarely see rail bent, if ever. On normal RR track, the "vertex bend", in the curved closure rail just before the point connected to the straight closure rail, is the only place where rail is bent. Normal RR minimum radius was 220-250 feet in the last century. All but 4 of our curves are tighter than that, and our tighter radii need a bend every foot or so. Big transit agencies often own a garage-sized roller bender that does a whole rail in a few minutes, once it's set up properly.
Here's a small, European tie inserter that's maybe 20 years old parked atop a 1904 granite box culvert at the far North end of Seashore's track:
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In most of New England, granite is plentiful and it's relatively easy to quarry blocks that split cleanly. These may have come from a rock cut about 1/4 mile north on the old Atlantic Shore Line RoW, or from an outcrop about 1/4 mile south. Because HISTORY, our rail has no ties where it crosses this culvert today. We plan to insert ties and place ballast around and under them before anything heavy uses the track.
A history of the Atlantic Shore Line Railway by O.R. Cummings is on-line here:
https://digicom.bpl.lib.me.us/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1029&context=books_pubs
Is there an interurban line O.R. Cummings didn't document for our benefit?
dave
O.R. Cummings did a pretty thorough job on Northern New England trolley lines, plus a number of others in the Northeastern US that I'm aware of. Wikipedia has a page for him, but I don't find a bibliography online. At Seashore we probably have the materials to compile one, I'll see if I can make that happen one of these winters.
Short-span granite bridges were common in my corner of New England. Here are some from Newbury, MA:
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Pre-WWI (from the pole lines) photo of Boston Road's bridge over the Little River. Four Rock crossing is at the left edge.
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2013 photo of what are almost certainly the same granite load-bearing members, redecorated with a recent W-section guardrail.
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The B&M (or maybe Eastern RR) crossing of the Little River a few yards downstream Replaced circa 1996 during rebuilding of this segment prior to reopening MBTA commuter service.
Another RR marsh culvert at MP 34.23 survived, possibly because the track is descending from its cut through Kent's Island leaving a lot of fill between the ties and the stone load-bearing members.
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How were those BFRs moved into position? I'm thinking trains of oxen hauling sleds during the winter.
I'll have to see if I can find a spot to add one on my railroad.
dave
If they were quarried on Cape Anne, Scott Jewell (and his Boston Docks & Rocks layout) are a fountain of information. He's picked up the knack of identifying granite to its source quarry by color, texture and inclusions. He says all the B&M granite abutments he's looked at closely came from Rock Of Ages in Barre, VT.
The stones in Newbury could have arrived by gundalow ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gundalow or see the reproductions aground in Dover or afloat in Portsmouth) or by the already-extant Eastern RR. The stone blocks for Seashore's culverts could have been quarried far away and delivered on flat cars from the then-active coal wharf in Cape Porpoise harbor, or in the rock cut 1/4 mile closer to Biddeford. Either way, RRs greatly simplified moving heavy items. Before RRs there were various schemes for lifting blocks up under pairs of large, stoutly-built wheels & axles and hauling with oxen. I expect this looked a lot like how Fort Ticonderoga's cannon were brought to Dorchester in 1776.
Cool stuff, especially the granite stone work.
Thanks, Karl.
2015 photos of old Maine Central track in the westerly siding at Crawfords, NH (top of Crawford Notch grade, originally Portland & Ogdensburg, then MEC Mountain Division, now Conway Scenic).
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The westerly siding turnout is on a curve. Looking closely, you can see it straightens out for a few feet through the switch points. The switchstand is a post-WWII Racor product. The black back-side of a flanger warning sign is almost invisible on the opposite side a little farther away.
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The frog looks like about #10-12, pretty sharp for a main line. This and the curved turnout show they needed all the length they could get for reassembling trains that had been doubled up the 2.2% grade from Bartlett, NH.
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Two sidings parallel the main line through Crawfords. CSRR hasn't used the westmost much, if at all, so the track has been untouched for decades. This is a Miller Joint, distinguished by the three part joint bar on the field side (as opposed to in the gauge). A steel channel against the web of the rails holds a wood block, then a more conventional toed (L-shape cross section) joint bar. I think it was supposed to be more resilient but section gangs hated the extra work when the wood rotted.
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When two different weights of rail meet, a compromise joint bar is required. This one is an old pattern. Its cast-in marks show 85 AS (left) and 80 AS (right). AS is short for American Society of Civil Engineers, which developed standards for many lighter-weight rail sections still in use.
The Ramapo #17 switchstand was widely used in the first half of the 20th century, at least in the Northeast. This one was installed by the MEC in Bartlett, NH, possibly before WWI. It's on the lead to the former roundhouse, whose turntable was removed when the MEC started using 2-6-6-2 helpers on the Crawford Notch grade.These articulateds were the B&M's last gasp of steam through the Hoosac Tunnel, before electrification in 1911.
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Here's a different compromise bar pattern, but definitely from the era where RRs would invest manufacturing cost to avoid confusion on the job site. 85 lb. A pattern left, a B&M custom 75 lb. section right. In the open air part of the museum in Wakefield, NH.
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A Low Ramapo switchstand on a single-direction derail protecting main line moves from loose cars on an industrial spur in Hampton, NH.
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A 100 lb. rail industrial switch added to an 85 lb. main track long after passenger service ended. The spur is built on the roadbed of the pre-1937 Westbound track, also in Hampton.
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Its High Ramapo switchstand never got a signal circuit contactor, but there is a spigot above the target for a switch lantern.
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James, thanks for all the pictures and explanations about what's going on.
I was going to ask how the rail was bent, but then you posted the manual rail bender.
What powers it and there has to be something stronger than that piece of wood to provide a stop.
Frog must be an off the shelf item.
Quote from: jbvb on May 14, 2026, 03:41:20 PMLast but not least, our Western-Cullen-Hayes manual rail bender:
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Volunteer Charlie's right hand (at left of my picture) is resting on the carrying handle of the mechanical jack (with remains of orange paint) that actually bends the rail. Its lever goes into the round hole in the crank projecting left out of the jack's body. The lever is steel, about 3 feet long. Ten 120-degree swings on the handle moves the head maybe 1/4". There's a calibrated scale on the bigger cylinder that's pushing on the main casting.
RR rail is elastic enough that we have to overbend, then see how much of the distance actually set vs. springing back.
In the picture above, the chunk of 4x4 the jack is resting on just supports the casting when there's no tension on it. We also use it to slide the jack casting along the rail and ties to the next bending location.
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Usually we apply the jack at 10-14" intervals. The actual bending fulcrum is the big double-flanged hook the boot is resting on. The bend will be made between the jack (rear) and the big hook. Center of the curve we're bending here will be to the right in this picture.
James, thanks for that last picture.
It shows the process better.
You're welcome, Rick.
Many B&M switches in bi-directional CTC territory (here Winchester MA about 1980) had an extra switch timber to accommodate all the gadgets:
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This switch's point position contactor is the black rounded object on the closest switch timber. In my modeling era, the B&M painted them silver. The modern Racor switchstand (black) is on the two regular headblocks left of the contactor. The remote unlock mechanism is farthest left. A train crew can only throw the switch if the Train Director in Winchester Tower releases the lock. Multiple CTC circuits are carried in a cable visible between line poles on the RH side.
And for those sensitive to RR safety, yes, I'm not safe standing in the gauge with my back to a potential train. In my defense, I could see a double-red STOP indication on the signal bridge in the distance. So a train behind me would be preparing to stop short of the signal.
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A little farther from Boston at Milepost 9, we see the same 3 timbers: switchstand behind the milepost, but using the two real headblocks. The point position contactor mounted on the extra timber, and the remote unlock box on the distant headblock. The switch frog on the left end of the crossover looks like it might be self-closing (also known as a sprung frog). Harder to tell about the RH end of the crossover. The guardrail point visible just this side of the underpass is pretty short, but that's all they had room for.
Thanks James. I may have to read it again to understand but it's really interesting.
Jerry
The switches above, in Winchester MA, had a modern style of guardrail across from the frog. Their ends are tapered vertically on the running rail side, but only enough to shift the opposing wheel's flange into the right position vis-a-vis the frog. The guardrail is located relative to the running rail by 2 or 3 cast blocks between the rail webs, throughbolted in place.
B&M and MEC track built before WWII often used a more conspicuous style, usually with 85 lb. rail. I haven't noticed it in photos of other railroads, but I haven't really searched my books. IIRC parts were still advertised in the 1948 Railway Maintenance of Way Cyclopedia.
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The ends are tapered down to the tie level so dragging equipment won't catch quite as easily. The design looks like they hoped to at least shift a derailed wheel next to the rail, if not actually rerail it. I can't imagine the impact not tearing the guardrail up at more than 15 MPH.
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One big casting, four smaller ones. Not sure how that could be cheaper than the three cored blocks in current guardrails. And this style still needs at least an inch planed off the base of the guardrail.
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This is only a rough model of that style of guard, but I do use them to give Code 70 track a different look from the main line.
James,
Love the track configuration in the above photo. Most excellently done.
Tom