Thursday, April 23, 2015

Satisfying my inner railway geek


If you don't like railways and trains, skip this post.  For the rest of us, here's a mammoth rail-laying machine that stirs my inner geek.





I've never seen one that large before.  Does anyone know where this beast operates?

Peter

13 comments:

Grog said...

The company appears to be based in Austria. Here's a longer video of one of their machines working in Sweden, this is a different machine based on the number but still impressive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwiNaHmOscU

Expatriate Owl said...

John Henry and his sledgehammer wouldn't stand a chance against this machine!

Old NFO said...

WOW, I think that might be in Russia, from the RU link... Maybe...

Anonymous said...

This video has one operating in Heilbronn, Germany

https://youtu.be/I-e9AmkbLZg

STxRynn said...

I always hear this music in my head when I see things like that...

https://youtu.be/qaC0vNLdLvY?t=1m14s

Thanks Looney Tunes!!

Bob said...

Most impressive.

Being a dyed-in-the-wool Rocky Mountain narrow gauge fan, I've never seen anything like this.

Ribbon rail and concrete ties... about two feet every five seconds, ballasted to boot!

Paul said...

Quite the rig. makes you wonder where they got the money to build such a rig.

LCB said...

Does any railway in the US use concrete ties? In my part of the country (upper Midwest)I've only seen wood ties.

=BCE56= said...

Check out O. Winston Link:

http://www.google.com/webhp?nord=1#nord=1&q=o+winston+link+photographs

Mainly N&W Steam Locomotives.

You're welcome

Anonymous said...

Salt Lake City uses concrete ties for their high-speed (70-80mph) commuter train.

Anonymous said...

Union Pacific is going that concrete way too. No more "toxic" creosote issues and crumblin ties. Plus they are recycling concrete to make the ties- and repeating that recycle when necessary. That is IL-IA reach. New lil plant outside Clinton IA to make new ties and misc 'blocks' for hwy crossings etc.

Would expect all the lines to do same as it happens.
~jeryk

AJ said...

A similar but smaller machine was used in AU to re-lay the Adelaide - Alice-Springs railway before the Alice - Darwin link was completed. There were some videos of that kicking around a long (internet) time ago...

Anonymous said...

It seems to be from Austria. A company called Plasser & Theurer, that specializes in building track maintenance machines from what I can gather.