By DouglAs John Bowen, Managing editor
Tamper wiTh This, please
Suppliers continue to refine and improve the machinery needed to keep costly but critical right-of-way components in top shape.
HARSCO RAIL
O
nce upon a pre-Staggers time, railroad switches and turnouts seemed on the verge of becoming almost a luxury. Railroad switch maintenance, it followed, was a diminishing need, since fewer switches were needed for a diminishing customer pool. Those days are long gone. Freight railroads are again a viable shipper and consignee choice, making switch needs more acute. Regional passenger railroads, along with Amtrak, began bolstering track capacity and throughput in the 1980s, installing high-quality turnouts and upgrading switching facilities. Such growth and revival, freight and passenger, makes switch tamping equipment even more critical for today’s railroads, who’ve learned the hard way what deferred maintenance can cost in the long run.
Switches “have always needed to be maintained, and it’s the most expensive part of the railroad to maintain,” says Phil Brown, tamper sales and marketing, Nordco, Inc. “Pre-Staggers, much of the work was done ‘by hand,’ with shovels. Machinery, of course, makes such work easier and more efficient.” The man-and-machine combination is still used at times, notes Harsco Rail Associate Product Manager-Surfacing Eric Carter. “Sometimes crews will still use a track jack, digging out the ballast from underneath the switch area, and actually use the jack to raise the turnout portion of the switch, before using a tamper. We offer a number of machines that can go through a switch without the need” to use a track jack,” he says, “but some railroads opt for one method, others the other.” August 2013 RAilwAy Age 35