Prototype for everything #274

[Paul Willis]

You know those occasions when you are trying to use up some offcuts of bullhead rail, of various short lengths?

And you have a length or two of pristine 0.5m rail fresh from the Stores that you don't want to chop up?

Well, just do what the Big Railway does, and slap it down anyway!

Short track lengths.JPG

I was on my way down from Victoria to Chichester for the Festival of Speed last Thursday, and at one of the station stops I spotted something so amateurish that I had to take a picture through the window of the coach.

A short (fifteen feet? Count the sleepers...) length of track with two fishplates. One with only half the expected number of bolts. And absolutely no apparent joins in the opposite rail. If we built track like that, we'd definitely be accused of NOT Getting It All Right!

But it follows the prototype...

Best,
Paul

[Mark Tatlow]

A loose track circuit connection on one end and missing at the other.

Perhaps they have a really large stay alive capacitor fitted to them EMUs?

[bécasse]

It's a siding so it uses secondhand bullhead rail, so short lengths might be expected - and there was a period when the SR used two-hole fishplates. The run-off conductor rail suggests that the siding buffer stop isn't at all far out of view on the left. So full marks to the pw gang that made it all up, effective and economical, still matching an ethos that started a century ago (and without which the Southern Railway would never have been able to electrify so much of its network) and only started to go out the window when slavishly following standards seemingly became more important than affordability.

[Julian Roberts]

Just happened to find this quote, from Martin Wynne.

In lightly used yards, depots and sidings, the usual rules about rail joints and sleeper spacings often don't apply. Almost anything goes. There is no need for standard rail lengths to be used, or for the joints to be opposite one another, or for the joints to be closely supported by the adjacent sleepers. The only fixed rule is that the chairs at a rail joint must be far enough apart to leave room for a fishplate. And even then short 2-bolt fishplates may be used instead of the normal 4-bolt.