That makes for a bad day!

As well a couple of weeks ago on the Grimsby sub in Niagara Falls Ontario, over night a freight picked a point at the Stamford sub junction and ran for about 4 miles with the trailing wheels off the tracks. Just like a real model railroad! Their repair crews take much more time though.

Steve

What is that hanging off the back end of the repair vehicle?  Got to love life imitating art, though I am thankful that my trackwork isn't dug up by every picked point.

If I recall my MOW equipment, that is a ballast tamper -

http://media.photobucket.com/image/railroad%20MOW%20equipment/NJTArrow2/DSC_0260.jpg

See the thing on top of the black pole on the raised front section? I believe that is a laser sight.

BTW, the front section up off the rails is probably lifted by by hydraulics, and lets them line things up independantly of the tamper itelf.

Hopefully, the "modern guys" here can shed more light on this machine, especially if I'm wrong!

RAH

Steve:  yup, the repair crews were still there when I when home from work 5 hours later.  Everything but the boxcar and the one next to it had been moved into other parts of the yard.   But three grey beards with hard hats were still there pondering.  Or maybe waiting for appropriate lift equipment.

Thad,

The thing hanging off the back is indeed part of a laser sighting device.  That little "rack" on wheels has a laser sight or mirror on top (the black box), and if you look carefully, you can see some folded up black parts that unfold accordian-style to space the rack a fixed distance away from the main machine, which has the rest of the laser-sighting equipment.  That gives them a good read on undulations in the track at that fixed distance.

One of the engineering crew told me that the car corrected it self as well. Don't know if he was pulling my leg, he claimed he was serious, and by the crossing in the picture there was no evidence of the wheels being off the track. There must be a rerailer behind the woods somewhere!!

Steve

Corrected itself? Not sure what you (or he) meant by that, but AFAIK, equipment like this, while self propelled, cannot operate off the rails (though maybe some real expensive models can, I dunno). Again, I think they have to be rolled on and off the rails at grade crossings or ramps.

RAH

He simply meant the last cars wheel sets got back on track at some point. Could they have moved closer and closer to proper alignment and then at a grade crossing jump back into the rails? Happens on the models! 

Steve 

They should have used one of those re-railer sections, only in 1:1 scale. [grin]

Seriously that's a great picture depicting a serious transition on the prototype.

Interesting discussion.

Those derailed wheel tracks at the crossing might be one of those interesting modeling details that no one notices until the 2nd or 3rd time they've glanced at the crossing.  Roll the old pizza-cutter cheapo trucks across wet drywall mud, or hack and slice the plastic roadway.

That seems to be a common scheme in most layouts I've seen:  little details that cause us to exclaim, "Wow", (or "Oh, Wow, man" if you're from SoCal 1960's ).  Because I saw dinosaurs in a barn on the Pasadena MRR in the early 70's, I've always tried to have a silly scene situated somewhere.