In the spring and summer of 1959 welded rail was installed south of the
Illinois river all the way to Grand Ridge. My father was section forman on the
Fox River Branch after a stint as assistant superintendent Clyde Yards and said
that the project was an experiment and was "a devil of a time" and had unkind
things to say about some of the machinery.
In 1960 and 1961 he was in charge of a section gang, an extra gang and a bridge
gang working on replacing the rail on the main from Sandwich to Mendota. There
was apparently some major problems just outside of Earlville related to some of
the welded rail and they had to tear some of the rail out because of some sort
of flaws in the rail. He was a fan of welded rail by 1961 because the machinery
was better by then.
Ed
________________________________________
From: CBQ@yahoogroups.com [CBQ@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of GLEN HAUG
[glenehaug@msn.com]
Sent: Sunday, April 19, 2009 8:30 PM
To: cbq@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [CBQ] Welded Rail
Rick:
Do you have a copy of the alignment charts from the 60's that (I believe) Steve
Holding put on CD? A study of these would give you quite a bit of information
about the locations of welded rail on the Q.
I'm not looking at my alignment charts right now, so I am going from memory. If
we ignore 78' rails and the Boysen Tunnel for the moment, I think the earliest
welded rail on the Q is 1961. The earliest roll date stamped on the rail that I
have seen is 1959. The vast majority, if not all, of the new welded rail from
the early 60's on is 136# CF&I.
The majority of new 136# welded rail was on Lines West, practically all of it
west of Hastings on the Denver line, and there was a lot of it on this line. I
would guess that this was because the Denver line had most of the 112# that was
older than 1940, and I would suspect that it included a fair amount of OH (open
hearth) rail as opposed to CC (control cooled) rail. There were big welded rail
programs throughout the 60's on the Denver line. There were also small amounts
of new 136# near Greenwood, Nebraska in the late 60's. The Boysen Tunnel had
129#TR welded rail, laid in 1950.
Lines East had much less welded rail, probably because much of the rail was
131#, 129#TR, and 112#TR. And I believe the 112#RE had a service date of 1940
or after with much of it in the 50's, and I think it was all control cooled.
There were also a lot of 78' rails on Lines East. I don't remember any welded
rail between Creston and the Missouri River. Nevertheless, there were
respectable amounts of 136# welded between Princeton and Neponset, between Mt.
Pleasant and Ottumwa, on Albia Hill, and between Shannon and Woodburn. Also,
much of the rail between Macomb and Camp Point was 136# CWR. And right at
merger, BN began to lay 136# CWR between Chicago and Aurora using rail ordered
by the Q.
The rail between Barstow and Denrock, referred to in a previous post was 112#
SH Welded in 1965, probably using the bolted 112# recovered from Lines West.
There was also quite a bit of SH 112# welded between Bushnell and Vermont, and
there may have been some between Concord and Centralia.
Glen Haug
To: cbq@yahoogroups.com<mailto:cbq%40yahoogroups.com>
From: rkeil6721@hotmail.com<mailto:rkeil6721%40hotmail.com>
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:53:21 -0500
Subject: [CBQ] Welded Rail
When did welded rail come into common use on teh Q. I'm specifically asking
about the mainline west of Creston, IA to the Missouri River.
Thanks
Ricky Keil
Bellevue, NE
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