Track Layer

by Charles LeRoss

By March 1910, the rail bed for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTP) had been blasted out of the rock on Kaien Island, following a route to where the line would cross Zanardi Rapids, to the mainland.  Track had been hand laid up to this point.  The GTP was awaiting the arrival of a track laying machine, known as the Pioneer.  Until the Zanardi Rapids bridge was completed, the track layer could not proceed up the line to lay steel.  On July 31, 1910 the bridge was completed and the track layer was able to proceed. 

Thanks to the Facebook page Vintage et Industrial and an enterprising film maker from 1914, we have an amazing 8 minute video of the track layer in operation.  I believe the machine in the video was laying track for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, and was coming from the east,(see the Grand Trunk Pacific on the side of one of the flatcars) and probably shows track being laid near Burns Lake, BC.  Following is a description of an operating track layer, which closely aligns with the track layer in the video:

“Although the track-layer may differ in many details of construction, the fundamental design and principles of operation are common, except in one instance, which will be described later. It is a cumbrous, lumbering piece of machinery carried on a flat car. At its forward end is a gantry or gallows-like structure, from the base of which project two booms, one on each side, whence the rails are handled. The deck of the car carries the steam plant for the supply of power to the machinery, while on an upper platform are stationed two men who carry out the delicate task of setting the rails in position. In a crow’s nest, immediately beside these men, and commanding a complete uninterrupted view of the whole operation in front, sits the man in charge of the track-laying gang.

“Immediately behind the track-layer come the trucks piled up with the steel rails, and an adequate supply of fishplates. Then follows the engine, and lastly the deck cars stacked high with the sleepers. The locomotive thus is placed in the centre of the equipment. Extending along one side of the train, from end to end, is a big wooden trough, through which the sleepers are conveyed from the trucks to the grade beyond. This trough projects some 40 feet or more beyond the track layer. Thus the sleepers are shot on the ground more than a full rail length ahead. The bottom of this trough is fitted with rollers armed with spikes, which, in revolving, grip the under side of the sleeper and propel it forward. The baulks are hurled through the trough in a continuous stream, the supply to the forward gang being governed entirely by the rate of the feed from the trucks into the conveyor.

“The operation is very simple. The constructional engineer has left the grade carried to formation level; its surface is clean, level, and clear. Down the centre of this pathway runs a row of pegs corresponding to the location stakes of the surveyor. As these pegs coincide with the centre line between the rails, the foreman casts off his distance on one side and sets his gauge line.

“The track-layer lumbers up to the end of the completed track under the pushing effort of the locomotive, and then work commences. The track-laying gang is distributed over the train and the grade in front. The conveyor rollers rattle and clank; the men on the first sleeper truck behind, pitch the baulks into the trough as fast as they can. With an ear-splitting din the timbers are hurried forward, and are disgorged upon the grade ahead or as in this video, each sleeper is picked up by two men. As rapidly as they fall out of the trough they are prised, pulled, pushed, and tugged into position, spaced the requisite distance apart, while care is seen that one end toes the gauge line at the side.

“Meanwhile the men on the trucks laden with the rails temporarily attach a pair of fish-plates to one end of a 33-feet length of steel, which is caught up and whisked to the front. It is lowered steadily, the free end drops between the two fish-plates on the last rail laid, bolts are slipped through to connect up, the gauge is struck, and with a few deft swings of the heavy sledges the gangers drive a spike here and there to clinch the metal to the sleepers below. In the first instance the work is perfunctorily carried out, everything being trued up hastily.

Directly a rail on each side has been laid the machine crawls forward. The extent of this intermittent advance varies according to whether the joints in the rails are in line or broken. In the first instance progress will be the length of a rail; in the second case only about half that distance. The noise is deafening. The screech of steam mingles with the rumbling and growling of the sleepers as they come bumping along the wooden conveyor trough. There is the ring of steel as the rails are swung out and lowered, and the clash of metal as the heavy sledges are swung to drive home the spikes and bolts. Above all may be heard the raucous shouts and orders of the man in the crow’s nest, and the babble of the 120 odd men, probably of half a dozen nationalities, shouting with the force of megaphones to make themselves heard.

“Under favourable conditions the metals can be laid at an average rate of two miles per day. When the going has been particularly advantageous, and a full gang of expert men has been available, the railway has crept forward between four and five miles between sunrise and sunset. There is a friendly rivalry among the crews, and if a chance presents itself, they let themselves go with infinite zest in the effort to create a day’s record. But the track so laid is extremely crude — a skeleton line in the fullest sense of the word, and little better than that laid down by the constructional armies for the movement of their ballast wagons and material. When the track-layer has passed and the strip of white level grade has received its steel embellishment, the line looks as if it had been twisted and buckled by a seismic disturbance, or had writhed under extreme expansion set up by an abnormally hot summer’s day.

“Hard on the heels of the track-layer come the aligning and leveling gangs. They straighten the kinks in the ribbon of steel, correct all the sags by lifting and packing ballast under the sleepers, and complete the truing and bolting up, as well as the spiking to every sleeper. Over this skeleton track, trains may move forward at slow speed — say up to six or eight miles an hour. As the rails are laid on the sub-grade, and ballasting is not carried out until later, very little effort is required to throw the track out of gauge. On one journey on the engine of a construction train shortly after the metals had been laid, three times in as many miles the engine dropped between the metals owing to the spreading of the rails. But the construction train expects such interludes, and, in anticipation, carries a goodly supply of tackle aboard in the form of powerful jacks, whereby the engine is lifted back again without very much trouble or serious delay. Then the train is backed a few feet, and the men on board fix up the road by bringing the rails into gauge so that the train may pass.

“The foregoing type of track-layer has been that in general use for many years, and has given general satisfaction. From time to time the details are improved, for the purpose of facilitating the avowed task of the machine. One man who had completed such an improvement came to an unfortunate end. He was on the track-layer, giving instructions, when he slipped. Before he was able to recover himself he was on his back in the sleeper conveyor, was caught by the spikes on the rollers, and was ground to death by the ever-moving stream of timbers before he could be extricated.

Sources:

Railway Wonders of the World, www.railwaywondersoftheworld.com
Vintage et Industrial, https://www.facebook.com/Vintage.et.Industrial

◀