Ticket To Ride

Fire Snakes

I furthered my education working on the railroad on this morning as to what to do when a rail breaks apart that had previously been welded.

This break in the rail was near a crossing, where the concrete crossing assembly with included rails had been installed and welded in place as seen just over the empty rail snake containers.
Where the break was, the web included mounting holes for joint-bars to be installed to hold the rail ends together. Problem was that the two sections of rail had pulled apart enough that the plates could not be installed as the holes located in the rails were out of alignment.

The remedy was to get out the rail snake heaters that were placed along the section of rail leading to the break. After heating the rail for some time, the gap closed enough to allow the joint-bars to be installed joining the two sections of rail back together.
With the arrival of summer a crew will come out to weld the two rail sections back together.
My new found friend who did the repair was very informative as to the goings on.
Fortunately train 118 was slow arriving, so he did not need to get the normal repair crew out, but handled it himself.

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