DL&W vs. ERIE Engineering Standards

Subway traffic is nowhere near as pounding and crushing as a train with loaded 100-ton coal hoppers. Concrete is good for static loads, but not for dynamic loads. The DL&W did try building a coal breaker from concrete but gave it up because of constant cracking.

The force of the pistons/wheels of a steam locomotive climbing a grade would reduce concrete ties to dust in not much time. The damage to concrete (even steel reinforced) after an earthquake is evidence of this. Plus you'd need different tools to replace concrete ties.

There is a landlocked stretch of track of the DL&W Ithaca branch on the South Hill (near Buttermilk Falls) - still has screw spikes holding rails to the ties. Conrail used this stretch to serve Morse Chain Works up until mid-80s. When I found the track in 2001, I found a pile of unused (albiet rusting) screw spikes near the tracks.

Chief Troll wrote: Nearly all rail rolled in 1937 and later was control cooled, and certainly all the EL rail was.

I understand that the rail industry and the steel makers adopted control cooling as the standard in 1937.

But--There are significant quantities of 112RE and 131RE rail in former Erie track with WWII roll dates which are stamped "OH" instead of "CC." Is "OH" a reliable indicator of open hearth vs. control cooled rail, or is it possible that some of this is actually control cooled?

Much of this 131RE appears to have been heat-treated on the last three inches or so of the end of the rail, presumably to harden it against end-batter.

WDB

Bill -

The raised brand on one side of the web will show the mill, the rail section, the month, the year, and in nearly all cases for the time of the Erie following WW I, the letters OH for Open Hearth. O.H. was the standard process for manufacturing steel for rails until the mid-1970's.

On the other side of the web is the hot stamp, showing the furnace, the ingot number, the rail letter and usually, after 1937, the letters CC for Control Cooled. Some variations were found, like CH for Control Cooled, Head Hardened (Bethlehem Steelton). I'm not sure, off the top of my head, what designation went on the end of the hot stamp for Full Heat Treated (USS Gary), or Control Cooled End Hardened. I've been too long in the Bridge Department.

The only post-1937 air-cooled rail I have ever seen was some light wartime sections bought by the Army Corps of Engineers for military use. I think they were in a hurry for it. I have found it (75 ASCE if I remember correctly) on some Army post railroads.

So, the rail can show OH in the brand and still be Control Cooled. The controled cooling process is so simple, and the results are so superior to air cooling, that AREA adopted it as an integral part of rail specifications beginning in 1937. Given the position of the ICC on train accidents attributable to transverse fissures, and the effectiveness of control cooling in preventing these flaws, no railroad management in their right mind would have bought any rail for use in a main track that was not control cooled after 1937.

For a little background, lighter rail sections that were common one hundred years ago, like 70 and 80 lbs per yard, did not commonly develop transverse fissures (a crosswise crack in the rail head, originating at a point inside the cross section of the rail). TF's became more common as heavier rail sections were adopted, and they became a very, very serious safety problem.

The solutions came from two directions. First, Dr. Elmer Sperry developed the induction rail flaw testing procedure, which was (and is) capable of detecting these flaws in the rail heads while they were still small enough not to cause the rail to fail. Thus, Sperry Rail Service.

Second, the origin of the flaws was traced by metallurgists to small inclusions of hydrogen in the rail steel. The larger rail sections cooled faster on the outside, and trapped the hydrogen inside the rail head, while the smaller sections had permitted it to escape during the air cooling process.

These hydrogen inclusions formed into small "shatter cracks" that later developed under fatigue loads into the tranverse fissures that could lead to complete rail failure. The controlled cooling process puts the rails into hot cooling beds, where the temperature is slowly (controlled) lowered, so the hydrogen has a chance to escape. This process practically (but not totally) eliminated the cause of transverse fissures.

The Erie Lackawanna tested all of its main track rail for rail flaws, usually with a Sperry Car, once per year. In addition, all non-control cooled rail on main routes was tested every six months. It made for some interesting trips on the Sperry Car, looking out for the compromise joints or some outward indication of a different rail section. Sometimes we just dropped the testing carriages sufficiently in advance of a different rail lot that we knew we could catch it all.

At the end of the day we had to report by wire to Cleveland how many miles, to the nearest hundredth, we had tested by rail weight and section. That number had to add up to the miles that Sperry billed us for that day. Sometimes it took one or two hours to add up all the rail lots tested and make the numbers work out. That made serious cuts in the sleep time for the Assistant Division Engineer. The conductor and flagman were good for 16 hours, and the Sperry crew slept on the car. The rest of us had to beat our way home, grab a few hours of sack time, then get back out there for the next day and a fresh train crew. But that's a story for another time.

While the DL&W was independent, concrete ties had not been developed to a practical state. The Pere Marquette railroad tried a simple design after WW II, but they failed quickly and were removed.

The concrete ties in use today represent the state of the art of concrete mix design, curing practice and prestressing. They were not practical until those factors came together starting about 30 years ago.

Even now, unless you have continuous welded rail with an excellent rail surface condition (no joints, no serious engine burns, etc) freight traffic loads can pound the daylights out of concrete ties in no time.

Another factor is the difficulty in mixing concrete and timber ties in the same track. It has been tried, but seldom with any success. The DL&W was not ready, and concrete ties themselves were not ready, for out-of-face tie replacement on any of the DL&W main tracks.

New York Central installed some test concrete ties in A E Perlman classification yard in 1967. They were on the east end of the two original "drill" tracks (used by class yard pullers to swing tracks over to the departure yard) on the east end of the yard.

I assume the test results were not favorable, since concrete didn't take the place of wood in subsequent years on PC or CR property (except, of course, as installed on NEC by Amtrak).

Those ties at Selkirk Yard were a two-block design from Sweden - one pad of concrete under each rail joined by a steel rod or tube. They didn't work.

I went down to Selkirk from the D&H office in Albany to look at them in late 1966 before they were installed. Later I found out from my NYC counterparts that they either sank into the ground or else the concrete pads separated from the steel and everything just sort of came apart.

Ah yes -- now I remember what they looked like!

Chief Troll wrote: So, the rail can show OH in the brand and still be Control Cooled.

Thanks--I suspected that might be true but wasn't sure.

On another point:

There are some articles in the Erie Railroad company magazine from the 1930s about "advances" in Erie standards including screw spikes and joint bars with slotted toes. I put "advances" in quotation marks because they can be the source of problems today.

I have seen a John Long photo of trackmen installing ties using screw spikes during WWII.

DL&W's big tie plates were definitely the better way to go.

WDB

I read somewhere that concrete ties have about the same service life of creosoted wooden ties - about 50 years.

If this is true, then the only consideration of using concrete over wood is environmental.....

Don't you people miss the smell of creosote at the station?

Dieter.

Bill -

I did some more checking to back up my memory on rail brands and stamping. AREA specs at the time allowed the CC to be either in the rolled brand (in place of OH in most cases) or at the end of the hot stamp. It would appear that when the mills first adopted controlled cooling, they modified the easiest thing first, the hot stamp. Later, when they replaced the finishing rolls that impressed the brand, they were able to put the CC into the brand itself. And CH denotes Control Cooled, End Hardened.

Dieter -
<
I read somewhere that concrete ties have about the same service life of creosoted wooden ties - about 50 years.

If this is true, then the only consideration of using concrete over wood is environmental.....
>
No, timber ties under heavy traffic, with good rail, ballast and tie plates, can be good for 20-30 years at the best. We still don't know a definite life expectancy for concrete ties in ideal conditions. But the ecomomics include many more factors than tie life. The heavier concrete ties will hold their surface and alignment better and permit a longer surfacing cycle. They also deflect less under load, and give lower rolling resistance.

For example, Amtrak would not be able to economically maintain its high speed (125 + mph) track in compliance with FRA standards without concrete ties. The additional weight of the ties, and the rail fastener system, provide much more stability than would timber ties.

However, on a light traffic or lower speed railroad, it might not be ecomomical to maintain the track geometry and rail surface conditions at a level that would sustain concrete ties, and they could be pounded to pieces sooner than timber ties would deteriorate.

Chief,

Thanks for all of the good info.

I've had a couple of questions about Erie / EL practices:

1) I remember quite a lot of steel mill slag ballast along the mains where I grew up (Cattaraugus County, NY). Was this common on other lines? Was it considered an effective ballast?

2) In the late EL years, they used to pull ties, turn them over, and re-use them. I gather that this was a stop-gap measure, caused by the EL's severe financial problems. Do you have any information on how well this worked?

JR

1) I remember quite a lot of steel mill slag ballast along the mains where I grew up (Cattaraugus County, NY). Was this common on other lines? Was it considered an effective ballast?

>> Basic slag ballast was not common on the New York Division, but it was cheap around the area of Youngstown and Buffalo. It is not as good as good granite.

2) In the late EL years, they used to pull ties, turn them over, and re-use them. I gather that this was a stop-gap measure, caused by the EL's severe financial problems. Do you have any information on how well this worked?

>> No one promoted the practice of turning over ties and re-using them. But . . . , sometimes a tie unit was set up to install second-hand ties released from a track retirement. Often the tie going in was worse than the tie coming out, so they just turned over the old tie, reinserted it, and kept going.

I can tell you definitely that it did not work. All it did was increase the gang's daily production number by one more tie. Those ties were usually shot within two years, so it was hardly worth the effort. The Erie Lackawanna was not the only railroad to pull that stunt in the 1960's and '70's