Broken rails, compromised track, and other tales Part 1 in Tales of the Jointed Track

Derailments, they are costly, not only to the railroad, but to the towns and cities they provide service to.

As a retired railroad locomotive engineer, and a former Company officer, it has never been the intention of the railroad to quote, blow up your town. Derailments are costly, not only on the Company side, but whatever collateral damage that exists.

Here are a few examples of broken rails.

This looks like this broke during severe cold and while a train was traversing it. You can see the rail anchor and spikes still holding it in place. Trains could be walked over at 5 mph under the supervision of the Signal maintainer and/or track supervisor. This triggers several things. This will trigger a shunt in the block signal system, causing signals either side to display red. In CTC a “Code Brown will generate on the DS screen, signalling an occupied block, although no trains are in the area. This usually shows up right after the train in question passed and the route does not clear.

You can see not only the rail had broken, but fractured the angle bars as well. This can be caused by bad ties and a compromised roadbed. This will stress or place stress and it is concentrated on a certain part of the track structure causing it to fail. These are common breaks found in rail yards.

You can see the rail here is broken, under a locomotive. They will have to walk it over and change it out or place a temporary angle bar repair to get the train over and replace the rail. The “I” looking image just to the right of the break, is where the rails were welded together. You can see the Silver looking material, by the break. That is a fresh break and the rail has snapped. Fatigue here could be caused by the manufacturing process. I am sure a full report was made and a sample of the rail would be sent to Mill and to the railroad metallurgical department for assessment. If the batch has been flawed these rail from this batch will all be changed out.

This photo has shown a really bad chunked out break enough said I suppose

looking at the photo this was in and near a switch.. You can see the guard rail, just behind the break .

Last updated February 20, 2015