I was watching this and began to wonder, at 01:00 thru 02:25 shows a crewman working a switch mechanism in the street that is obviously submerged in water, and I thought this is in Chicago, what would they do during winter when that pool of water could easily be a solid block of ice?
They ship and receive by truck
Lite fusee works wonders for melting frozen water, or frozen brake hoses. Lite the fusee, let it burn, chip away the ice from the points/switch. Winter railroading is not a lot of fun when you work switch jobs, over the the road jobs are nice until you have to walk your entire train in waist deep snow. The bottom half gets soaked with snow, the top half with sweat.
Seems like you would have to pound the carp out of the mechanism, connecting arm and rail section if the ice was bad. Even with fuses.
Yep, you do. I would imagine that in a cold climate, the RR has an assigned MOW crew that all they do is go around cleaning switches. Most locomotives have brooms with the other end being a ice chipper. Works good for cleaning ballast out of the points, or leaves.
No telling what kind of mutant bacteria are living in that water.
Lots of salt works well too, but rusts the life out of the throw…I once saw a MOW guy dump a bag of salt into just such a situation, in Montreal, years ago…can’t say that it was the norm, but it worked to keep the switch working, where it was used almost every day.
Craig Townsend said:
Yep, you do. I would imagine that in a cold climate, the RR has an assigned MOW crew that all they do is go around cleaning switches. Most locomotives have brooms with the other end being a ice chipper. Works good for cleaning ballast out of the points, or leaves.
I have a paint brush and screwdriver to keep ballast and pine needles out of the points. If the points get frozen, operations stop until spring. I tried a torch, but had to stop when the ties started smoking. I might give salt a look, though. Trains gotta get through.
Steve, try an inferred heat lamp. I used one to dry out some ballast one spring. Set it up and come back like 30 min later, and the switch should be thawed and toasty.
You should watch Alaska Railroad on Discovery I think. They have crews that check and fix that kind of stuff. Its a really cool show.
Yep!!