Circular 8.9 Maintenance of Way - Metal Scrap Operations

Western Washington Short Line
Office of the General Manager
100 Railroad Avenue
Monetesano, Washington

CIRCULAR NUMBER: 8.9                                                                 DATE: January 1, 1955

MAINTENANCE OF WAY
Metal Scrap Operations

BY AUTHORITY OF:


S.B.Clinard
President and General Manager
___________________________________________________________________________________

 A rare fourth type of work train contained a crane car with a giant electro-magnet, as well as several gondola cars. It went along the right-of-way after some new rail had been laid, new sidings put in, bridges had been built, or perhaps other work had been done. It picked up anything metal along the right-of-way that was made out of steel--things like short pieces of rail that had been cut out to fit around the switches, buckets or piles of spikes, piles of tie plates, etc. I may have seen one of these one time. If both gondola cars on either side of the crane car got full, the train would have to go to some siding somewhere, and get an empty one or two next to the crane again. Like the other work trains, it was not much work for the train crew other than the engineer.

Scrap metal recovery. Railroads are great recyclers, at least on railroads with the capability to do so. Worn wheel sets from RIP tracks are moved to a central shop, fore either returning or broken up into small enough pieces for convenient remelting. The same with tie spikes, tie plates, joint bars and rail. All metal scrap should be collected, sorted, and stored for further disposition.

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