Looking back - Railroad surfacing - 9/2/1998

In late August 1998, the R&GVRRM along with its partner museum had a great opportunity to have some track surfacing done on the museums' demonstration railroad. After doing it mostly by hand or with the R&GVRRM's small Jackson tamper, the museums' hired C&G Surfacing to bring in their production torsion tamper and ballast regulator to work as much of the museums' two mile mainline as the machines could negotiate. The museums were lucky since C&G was just finishing a job on the Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad and were already using the R&GVRRM's lead for equipment storage.

The R&GVRRM did all of the prep work which included spreading 600 tons of stone using the museum's hyrail dump truck. Rigged by museum volunteer, George Knab, with ropes to control the dump body from the cab, the hyrail dump did a very admirable job laying down the stone needed for the contractor.

So come and take a look back as we see the stone being loaded, moved and spread followed by C&G's machines in action on September 2, 1998. Two men, two machines and 1.5 days did amazing work. The R&GVRRM continues its search to add more mechanized track maintenance machines to our arsenal. Know of something? Have something you might be willing to donate? Please let us know.

And thanks for looking back...

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• RGVRRM
• Rochester
• tamper
• railroad
• maintenance
• way
• Genesee
• valley
• museum
• ballast
• hyrail
• regulator
• Fairmont
• track
• work

[Lutherkb]

LV 211 on the loop switch!? :)

[rgvrrm]

@Lutherkb Yes. We even had #211, #79 & #1843 all the way up the backside of the loop at one time where #211 and #79 were stored on display for a summer.

[chiefsroc]

art3490.....yeah I hear the drag sound when it travels now that you mention it.old torsion beam its hard to tell what is wore out or out of adjustment. I liked the mark lll's with four wheel drive and a back -up tamper. got boring real fast unless u had a laser.

[art3490]

@chiefsroc - Ya me too - The first one was the side jacks that was a totally messed up machine! - The Mark two was better - gotta start somewhere huh - The Torsion beam was alot better - Where they show the machine working you can hear that the torsion beam is being dragged - somebody does not have the machine properly adjusted for proper tamping

[art3490]

Also noticed that the "plug" that goes into the liner mask is missing & that would create problems ahead - it's usually better to cover it up

[chiefsroc]

cool to see an old torsion beam. ran mark 1, mark 2 ,and mark 3's back in the 80's

[art3490]

MOST IMPORTANTLY MAKING SURE YOUR REACTION PADS WERE OILED & GREASED FREQUENTLY PER DAY WAS A NESSITY

[art3490]

I used to operate a machine like the one shown in the video for about 4 to 5 yrs - once you fine tune all the lights & recievers, find zero level,zero liner "it's show time"!

sometimes I wish I could do that again - even if it's for a short time

I even liked to tamp switches too because it was challenging! boring straight tack & curves although back to back tight curves were nice & tamping road crossings were nice too