Not sure I beleive that Rail line repair

[Harry Bloomfield]

Fixing a railway line in Alaska....

They had a worn section to replace so measured up the length they had on the truck, with which to replace it - around 14 feet. Chalk marked the damaged piece to cut it out, from an existing join and replace it with the new 14 foot section. All joined by fish-plates.

The new piece was an inch short, which they blamed on the line being under tension before they cut it. To expand it, they laid some sort of combustible rope along the existing bit of line (maybe 30 feet) and it showed the gap between new and old closing up.

1. Why would it be under such tension, as to be able to shrink by 1"?
2. Would a 30" line section really expand by 1" with so little heat?
3. Surely once it cooled down anyway, the 1" gap would return anyway. the fish plates are there to allowing for the expansion and contraction.

[Iggy]

replying to Harry Bloomfield, Iggy wrote: I don't buy it either. TOTAL HACK WORK by hacks trying to justify their stupidity! It's quite ridiculous that they wouldn't know about such a GUARANTEED situation of ground movement for one and for another thing that the gap would've been APPARENT at the prior fish plates? It's common sense and common practice to remove the old joint's fish plates before cutting anything.

Even with their "astonishing discovery" FRAUD, they'd cut the fish plate end off and burn-in new fish plate holes. One might even do a 2nd set of fish plates and reuse a good piece of the moronically cut out section to get rid of any gap. And no, there's no "combustible rope" that lets you stretch heavy steel BY HAND or WISHFUL THINKING. Just stupid lies reported by an imbecile and fellow hack "journalist".

[The Natural Philosopher]

Cripes . This arrived before what it was replying to.

Anyway, having found te origianl and checking it wasnt posted in the stone age, harry, its normal for rails to be under either tension or compression, amd modern rails are long welded and then stuck down to heavy concrete sleepers to stop them buckling.

Normally with fishplates you are talking about non long welded rails with expansion gaps, but there is always a point where long welded meets old stuff.

one inch in 30 feet ios 3% give or take

steel has a coefficient of expansion of around 12 ppm per degree C

Which would mean a temperature difference of 250C to create an inch of expansion.

in a 30ft rail. But I have never heard of a 30 ft rail

railsare generaly at least twice that length

[Caecilius]

Wouldn't they notice the one-inch gap that suddently appeared when they made the first cut?

[Harry Bloomfield]

The Natural Philosopher explained :

I could only make a judgement in regards to the length. I doubt the rail got to anything hotter than warm to the touch - the 'rope' material simply burned with a small yellow flame laid along one side of the rail. It was something special for that sort of purpose, they pulled the 'rope' from a 5 gall drum.

It was the usual drama, of a train being due on the line in just twenty minutes and just two of them working on the line repair. The line cutting grinder was faulty, they fixed that, cut the line, then fixed the 1" gap. There was no mention or sight of them drilling the holes through the newly cut end of the line for the fish-plate bolts.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well MOST of this stuff is somewhat staged