Marking Bad Railroad Cross Ties on Excepted Track

We gonna show you what criteria to look for when replacing bad railroad ties.
You'll learn what Excepted Track is and also see examples of the different
things we look for in a defective tie and how they get marked for change out.
Your also gonna see in this video a rail with a crushed head that is just
about ready for the rail head to break out. That rail was changed 3 days after
this video was made.

Old ties are sorted thru, the still decent ones we generally keep for relay ties,
meaning then can be re used, most likely for a siding or other slow speed
use. Main line replacement ties here are almost always new ties. The really bad ones
go to a landfill.

We do not use concrete ties here. The biggest reason is because my tamper
has an old operating system that has limit switches on the tamper work heads.
The work heads are what goes up and down and drives the blade of the
tamping tools down below the bottom of the tie.

Wood ties are 7 inches thick, concrete ties are 9 inches thick. The tamping blades
must go below the bottom of the tie in order to push ballast under the tie. The
bottom limit switch on my work heads control the depth of the tools before they
squeeze the ballast. Each work head has 1 limit switch for this, thus with 4 work
heads on the tamper, 4 limit switches. In order for me to tamp concrete ties, I would
have to manually loosen, then move each limit switch down, then re tighten them.
To do this I have to crawl under the tamper. Then to go back to wood, means
reversing the process.

So mixing wood and concrete ties would be a nightmare and a real time consuming
job to tamp. Even having a whole curve of concrete would still mean readjusting
the limit switches for each curve.

I have an old QNX Windows operating system. The new Jupiter 2 operating systems
do away with limit switches and allow the operator to toggle from in the cab with the
simple flick of a switch. We are looking into up grading my OS to a Jupiter 2, it's not
a cheap up grade. However, until that time happens when and if I get an up grade there will
be no concrete ties here. I will do a video sometime in the far future on the differences
between wood and concrete ties.

#CrossTies#BadRailroadTies#RailroadTies

Made April 10, 2022