Bullhead Track

[Orinoco]

A recent conversation with a friend made me wonder just how many countries had bullhead trackwork at one time or another. I had assumed it was purely a British phenomenon and all overseas railways used flat-bottomed track, but clearly this is not true.

 

I have established through photos and other references that it was present (to some degree or other) in...

 

India

Brazil

Australia

Egypt

 

.......... plus the French version.

 

It would be interesting to know where else it was installed. I guess any railway owned or run by the British might be a candidate.

[Pacific231G]

Apparently it was used early on in Italy though I think they went over to Vignoles fairly early on and on some lines in Switzerland. In France it's still in use on a few lines and I don't think double champignon is significantly different from bullhead. It would be interesting to see whether the use of bullhead type rail was associated with left hand running as that would indicate early British influences.

[Orinoco]

Apparently it was used early on in Italy though I think they went over to Vignoles fairly early on and on some lines in Switzerland. In France it's still in use on a few lines and I don't think double champignon is significantly different from bullhead. It would be interesting to see whether the use of bullhead type rail was associated with left hand running as that would indicate early British influences.

 

I think several British engineers moved over to France in the early days, including Buddicom who took loco designs and experience of British railway operation with him.

[Pacific231G]

I think several British engineers moved over to France in the early days, including Buddicom who took loco designs and experience of British railway operation with him.

Oh definitely and the first railway signal used in France was the GW disc and crossbar. A number of early French railways were also built by British contractors but it was the use of bullhead in other countries that I was curious about.

[Fat Controller]

I believe I saw some on a siding on the Copenhagen- Helsingbore line recently.

[Oldddudders]

I've always assumed that because bullhead requires chairs, it would only be used in construction that involved serious investment. I assume also that railways that were built by felling the local trees for sleepers did not use chairs, and needed flat-bottom rail to be spiked onto the new wood?

[Fat Controller]

I've always assumed that because bullhead requires chairs, it would only be used in construction that involved serious investment. I assume also that railways that were built by felling the local trees for sleepers did not use chairs, and needed flat-bottom rail to be spiked onto the new wood?

Bullhead was originally considered an 'economic' rail: the idea being that, in the days before rail-grinders, the rail could first be reversed (outside rail becoming inside and v-v), and then inverted, with the reversal process being repeated. It was soon found that both chairs and wheels caused the rail to wear, albeit to different patterns, so the four-fold use of the rail was soon abandoned. I do remember seeing references to 'rail-turning' in documents as late as the 1970s, so presumably the 'inside to outside' idea continued.

[TheSignalEngineer]

..................I do remember seeing references to 'rail-turning' in documents as late as the 1970s, so presumably the 'inside to outside' idea continued.

 

I've seen it done with FB as well. It was not easy to actually turn the rail end for end in a lot of cases and the rail naturally took the curve of the line with use, so transposing the rails with trimming and recutting of ends to get the joints to match was often done. Cutting and redrilling was allowed until the rail reached 45ft long IIRC.

[Pacific231G]

I've always assumed that because bullhead requires chairs, it would only be used in construction that involved serious investment. I assume also that railways that were built by felling the local trees for sleepers did not use chairs, and needed flat-bottom rail to be spiked onto the new wood?

That may have been the case with light railways that seem to have made far less use of bullhead even in Britain. I think though that the use of roughly shaped local timber was more an early American phenomenon when they were laying track rather crudely and as quickly as possible to get government payouts. For most railways, even when using local timber, the contractors would have had proper sawmills albeit portable ones churning out standard section sleepers. I'm not sure if new wood is more able to hold spikes than track screws but in Europe screws or bolts were generally used rather than spikes so a sleeper had to be able to secure these whether they were holding chairs or the web of a vignoles (FB) rail.

 

Before the development of things like Pandrol clips, bullhead would have had advantages for manual maintenance. To replace a rail it was only necessary to knock out the keys and unbolt the fishplates rather than having to remove several spikes or track screws for each sleeper. Mechanisation of the process would probably have lestened that advantage but I'm guessing it was one reason why the London Underground which requires very frequent track maintenance stayed with BH rail for so long. If you watch the Movie "The Train" you'll see Burt Lancaster dismantling track with both types of rail to try to stop the "art train" and the section where the track was BH was clearly quicker.

 

Though it's not mentioned in articles about track, one reason why most (though by no means all) light railways used FB rail even when BH was the norm on main lines may simply have been to avoid the extra cost of chairs. However "double champignon" i.e. bullhead was used by some metre gauge railways in France and the group (SABA) that have restored the southern section of the Blanc-Argent as a preserved/tourist line have decided to try to keep it in order to preserve that aspect of its legacy.

[dullsteamer]

...just how many countries had bullhead trackwork at one time or another...It would be interesting to know where else it was installed. I guess any railway owned or run by the British might be a candidate.

 

Or railways where the original engineers were British. BH rail was quite common in Japan.

[Southernman46]

I've seen it done with FB as well. It was not easy to actually turn the rail end for end in a lot of cases and the rail naturally took the curve of the line with use, so transposing the rails with trimming and recutting of ends to get the joints to match was often done. Cutting and redrilling was allowed until the rail reached 45ft long IIRC.

 

Still a legitimate process these days - transposing CWR from inside to outside and vice versa