Good morning, Jim, Tom, Karl, Jeff and those who stop by later.  Nice dinner at my middle kid's place last night, my grandson is growing but not yet crawling.  Today the NH seacoast is overcast and wet, with chances of more rain rising about noon.

Possibly some modeling this afternoon, but I have to finish one report, write another, order a part and pay bills first.

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.



Here's a closeup of the frog we used for this turnout:



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:



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.

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.



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.

Here's a view of the trolley #4 angle point/mate double slip switch earlier in the project.



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.

Good morning, all. Grey skies in the lower Merrimack valley too. Blossoms are still on my apples, peaches and my doogwood and sour cherry. They're just opening on my lilacs.  They'd be prettier in sun, but we need any rain we may get.

I'm home today till dinner with one of my kids later.  Lots of house chores, paperwork and ordering stuff.  We'll see if modeling manages to rise to the top at any point.

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...

Good morning, Rick, Curt, Larry and later arrivals.  The coast of the Gulf of Maine is overcast with some showers forecast mid-day.

I'm still going to Seashore, as me and the other engineer present need to decide how to make the switch frog we've been working on fit the existing rails better than our predecessors.  It appears they used too-small bolts so they could skew the rail ends a bit.  Ugh.  Probably some pictures tonight or tomorrow, when I'm rained out.

Checking photos in a Santa Fe Pasadena Subdivision page on Flickr, I see there was one short span and two longer spans. One long span and the short span are pin-connected, using eyebars for members under tension only.  The westerly (towards LAUPT IIRC, I only crossed it a couple of times) span appears to be the same length as the longer pin-connected span, but it's plate-connected. Was the LA River's concrete trough widened at some time after about 1900-10?  Or did one span get wrecked by a flood? AFAIK that's the period when calculus got good enough to allow design of fully plate-connected bridges.

If I ever saw a more-skewed bridge, I don't remember it.  The lattice crossbracing on each end of the pin-connected spans appears identical, and the pin-connected spans will be where you use the Classic Laced Bridge Girders, the plate-connected span uses Gusseted Bridge Girders.  But I can't say how the scaled size of each will compare with the look of the prototype.  A 270 foot long through truss is pretty big. The CV bridge is 153 scale feet long, so its parts might look a little light and the portals a little low in a model of a much longer prototype.

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.  

Good morning, all.  Heavy overcast along the Gulf of Maine, 50F now rising to mid 60s later.  No sun till Tuesday.

Off to Seashore in a bit, but returning early for Selectmen.  I have more old track pictures to post, maybe tonight.

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.



Side view of a sharp angle (maybe #4) bolted frog in (I think) 80 lb.



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.

Nice rock strata.  A lot of progress overall since my last visit.

Good morning, all. Pleasant spring day in the lower Merrimack valley, with a shower possible later.

Rick, SD is one of three US states I've never visited, but somewhere I once found a geological history of it. The glaciers and the ancestors of today's Missouri River had a complicated, occasionally very dramatic history.

Tom, I owned an indoor pool for 17 years. My 2nd wife wanted that house in the divorce, I had no problem giving it to her. She eventually got tired of the pool and demolished it during a renovation that shrank that house considerably.

Good morning, Jeff and later arrivals.  The sun is peeking through clouds over the NH seacoast right now. 60F, with showers and wind gusts forecast later.  Guess I'll have to move the chickens' food dishes under one roof or another this afternoon, though they don't go back to the pellets much after breakfast.  Probably modeling this evening, there's bookkeeping and outdoor chores first.

The biggest tree I've modeled is on my HO Rowley module, which has traveled quite a lot with the HUB Division Module Group.



It's 10" tall, so about 70 scale feet. I had to keep it below the top of the backdrop for transportation, but that's a realistic height for a big, old Sugar Maple growing alone.  Trunk and branches were twisted from an off-cut of 4/0 flexible copper welding cable. I smoothed the trunk and large branches with solder and acrylic modeling paste. I painted the trunk and applied Woodland Scenics fiber and ground foam foliage using clear Krylon as the adhesive. The tree is mounted with a screw into the trunk from below so it's removable.