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Modern Track-Laying Machine

(From Our London Correspondent.)

Permanent way gangs have had their work immensely simplified in recent years by the introduction of mechanical devices of one kind and another. One of the most important aids to speedy track laying ever utilised, takes the form of a special track-laying machine, one of which has just been brought into service at Home on the L. and N.E. Railway.

The machine consists of a power van, a saw trolley, a train trolley, and the track-layer proper. The power van consists of a 72 h.p. petrol-driven generating set providing the electric current for the various motors operating the track-layer, together with the necessary switchgear. The saw trolley consists of two circular saws mounted on a four-wheeled truck and so arranged that it cuts the ends of sleepers simultaneously as the track is moved along. The track-layer itself is a twelve-wheeled vehicle on which is mounted a cantilever crane. The train trolley runs not on the track itself, but on rails fixed to the wagons forming the materials train, linked together in such a way as to provide a continuous run from one end of the train to the other. The materials train is loaded at the depot with rails already fixed to chairs and sleepers, and on arrival at the site the first operation is for the saw trolley to run over it and cut the sleepers down to a uniform length, 8ft. 6in., this being done without moving the track. The fishplates joining one section of rail to the next are removed, and the cantilever on the tracklayer lifts the complete section up, places it on the train trolley, which then carries it back along the train, drops it, and returns with a new section. The new section is lowered to the track, and the whole train advances over it, and the next section is similarly dealt with. By the use of equipment such as this, track relaying is greatly simplified, and relaying costs reduced to a minimum.

“I am never tired of travelling. There is something in the rhythm of a railway train that I really like.”—Kubelik in an Interview.