This summer (on the hottest day of the year) AMTRAK was replacing concrete ties on the Northeast Corridor. The office I work at is right next to it so I grabbed a camera. Enjoy. I will try my best to keep them in order. It was one long train. It was stuck for a while because when a tie would break into pieces, it jammed the machine.
The most amazing part was after they removed the spikes, the machine would pick up the welded rails and spread them! Then it could lift the old ties onto the conveyor belt, and a new tie would be placed. They had to come back later to respread ballast. Very impressive operation.
Hold on, here we go…
This is one end. There were 2 of those yellow spiders. One is returning from taking a load of old ties to the front. Then they were chained down.
The second spider would bring the old ties back to the first spider, then pick up a load of new ties to the laying machine.
This was the other end.
These last 2 were the driver of one of the spiders.
This is the conveyor belt of old up, new down.
Other end again.
I told the guys that this is the work my Grandfather used to do by hand as a Trackman on the Pennsylvania Railroad a few miles down the track from here. Back then (1930’s & 40’s) freight used to run also.
So enjoy this guys. Here is a challenging build for someone!