Collarmite

I often take a walk in the afternoons. My route takes me along a short stretch of railroad. These rail lines have been undergoing renovation this fall. They are replacing the old rails with new, the old creosote wood ties with concrete and they may even be adding a third line. There were a couple of guys working there today and I stopped to chat. One guy was busy driving in clips with a sledgehammer. The clips hold the rail to the iron pad that is bolted to the concrete tie. The other guy, from his accent, was a Mexican. He told me they had made twelve welds this week. Two on Tuesday, two on Wednesday, six yesterday and two today. Yesterday was a hard day. He was very tired when he got home. They are welding sections of railroad track together. There was an inch and half gap between two sections of track and they had to move heaven and earth to close the gap enough that he could weld it. I asked if they used thermite for welding, and he said no, they use collarmite, or at least I think that is what he said. I could find no reference to it on the web. I think it might be a brand name. Anyway, it is similar to thermite, build a ceramic dam around the weld site, fill it with weld compound and light it off.

The new tracks appear to be very wavy as you look down the line. I remember watching them move a long piece of welded track when they were putting in the light rail line in Hillsboro. For some reason they were moving it from one side of the street to the other. This piece of track was very long, hundreds of feet at least. They were using some kind of tractor machine and driving it slowly down the street. The rail had a huge 'S' bend in it, maybe 50 feet wide and 150 feet long. I did not think railroad rails could be bent like that, but evidently they are made of a very soft iron. When I asked the Mexican how they would straiten the wavy rails, he said a machine with a computer would come down the track and do it. This I would like to see. I imagine it is a very slow process.