Rerailing a loco the lo-tech way

[PhilH]

I found

to be absolutely fascinating and the complete antidote to today's 'you can't do that without 52 bits of paper' environment.

[Oldddudders]

I found

to be absolutely fascinating and the complete antidote to today's 'you can't do that without 52 bits of paper' environment.

Yes, thoroughly practical railwaymen doing the necessary. Slightly surprised that they didn't have a re-railing ramp in use - many US diesels seem to carry one attached to the bogie (truck) sideframe for just such occasions.

 

Many years ago, in Cory's sidings at Strood, there were a handful of little 4-wheel industrial diesel locos, mostly out of service. One had been pushed back, so it had one axle off the end of the siding, pointing up at nearly 45 degrees. My boss asked me to see if we could get the daily BR trip loco to pull it back on the track, so I did the same sort of packing job under the wheels and when the EDL (73 in modern parlance!) arrived I asked the driver if he'd like to help. We roped him up and bingo, back on the siding. The driver said the last time he'd done something like that, he was rescuing a Brighton K class mogul!

[The Stationmaster]

Not a bad idea to use some fishplates on top of the timber packing but they have a tendency to break whereas timber gives (as seen in the video) - but still a good way round if you don't have enough timber to hand although steel plate is better as it bends instead of breaking.

 

The Yard Master at Reading many years ago wouldn't even let the breakdown vans in the yard and despised the use of re-railing ramps (which can also lead to damage) and he used sprags to get wagons back on with no trouble. Great man from whom to learn the art of re-railing.

[highpeak]

Tie plates on top of timber packing worked very well when I was a volunteer at a museum in the USA. The general drill was to jack the truck frame up, shove some packing and a tieplate under the flange, grease the tie plate and use a jack to shove the whole lot sideways and back onto the rail.

Where things got tricky was a derailment in an area where the ground was very soft, because the jack usually just compressed the dirt rather than lift the truck.