15 Years of Rail Wear Led to This

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:01]Welcome to the Millbrook Railroad, and the wind has been whipping around pretty good today.

[00:00:05]But, uh I got to clean off the track a little bit with this um test long leaf blower thing.

[00:00:14]So.

[00:00:16]Got to get as much use as I can out of this thing.

[00:00:31]Oh, yeah, the uh job today.

[00:00:34]I want to know that we're going to flip the outside rail.

[00:00:37]But, I got to clean off the track a little bit. Um get all the detritus off it.

[00:00:55]As the wind howls behind us to put more leaves on the track. Yes, yes, yes.

[00:01:00]So, to everyone wondering how do we know that the rail is wearing?

[00:01:06]This is what decent rail looks like.

[00:01:09]Remember how thick the top of that is compared to the tie plate and the web.

[00:01:16]Now, Now, we come down here. No, it's right here.

[00:01:21]That's the worst of it right there, yeah. That's how Half gone. That's how bad it is in most places on this curve.

[00:01:29]So, yeah, it's it's overdue.

[00:01:33]Just in case you can't see it, I'll show you this picture right here. Half of the rail head is gone on the right-hand side of the rail head.

[00:01:42]It's kind of subtle from this angle, but believe me, it's quite a lot of rail gone.

[00:01:49]Mind you, it took 15 years to get this way.

[00:01:52]Yeah, this is some of the longest lasting rail on the road.

[00:01:59]Now it is time for the comically long bit.

[00:02:05]Comically long bit?

[00:02:09]Uh we're going to voice the car as we hope you like our show.

[00:02:16]Oh, we're going the whole length of the cope?

[00:02:21]This is where it starts.

[00:02:23]Now in case you're wondering, what I'm doing here is loosening the screws on either side of the foot of the rail, so I can lift that one rail up off the tie plates.

[00:03:47]And now I've gotten the full 10 ft of that rail. Eric is starting to jockey the rail up out from between the screws without removing them completely.

[00:03:58]We're going to pull this piece of rail right out, flip it around, and put it back in.

[00:04:33]So, when I lifted this rail, I noticed there were a bunch of leaves where the rail was. They were stuck under the rail, so we'll just take care of that real quick with this leaf blower.

[00:04:42]I just didn't expect the leaf blower to summon a spring zephyr.

[00:05:05]Now, the rail is flipped and rebent.

[00:05:08]We get to put it back in.

[00:05:10]Kind of the opposite of removing it, but it's actually engaged this time.

[00:05:58]>> Now we just screw the rail back in.

[00:06:07]Now to say this is long and tedious would be a bit of an understatement.

[00:06:10]That's why I've sped up the footage more than 10 times.

[00:06:27]So now I take the rail bending bars and profile the joint to the curve.

[00:06:38]Now when we're flipping the rail like this, we have to remove the joint bars and sometimes the hardware is just rusted in place, so we have to use the angle grinder to cut it all off. It's just easier that way.

[00:07:25]After a couple of minutes of jacking it back and forth between the screws, it just comes right out and we can flip it right around.

[00:07:56]>> And yes, the comically long bit is made for standing up and screwing these in, but I just didn't feel like pulling it all off and shortening it down to something smaller.

[00:08:19]So, under this rail, there are 31 ties, 31 tie plates, and 62 screws to tighten.

[00:08:26]It gets tedious.

[00:08:42]Well, now it's time to put the joint bars in, connect this rail to the downhill side rail.

[00:08:49]Of course, the uphill side rail needs to be flipped still, but we'll get to that in a minute.

[00:08:55]Turns out the screws that hold the rail onto the ties are in the way of the screws that hold the joint bar together.

[00:09:02]So, I got to take those out.

[00:09:10]Okay, we're going to put the joint together for real this time.

[00:09:15]Now, this kind of rail is called culvert rail, and unfortunately, they don't make it anymore.

[00:09:20]But, I've been finding as many sources of old stock for this rail as I can, and I am installing more of it.

[00:09:30]Now, the screws holding the joint bars together is 4-40 screws and lock nuts.

[00:09:39]And it uses number six hex washer head screws to fasten the rail to the tie plates.

[00:09:46]I can't stress enough how important tie plates are to this rail. It'll help you stay engaged.

[00:09:53]That's actually why the rail further down, the smaller rail, kicks out of gauge so much.

[00:09:58]Lack of tie plates.

[00:10:02]And while I'm here working on the track anyway, I might as well replace this rotten tie.

[00:10:07]Because why not, right?

[00:10:10]I'll be replacing more ties in this section soon, but I figure I'll replace this one right now.

[00:10:15]This is one of my original ties. It's untreated wood and it's been in the ground for 15 years.

[00:10:23]I'd say I got some pretty good mileage out of it.

[00:10:29]So, now I'm cleaning out what's left of that rotten tie and I'm going to shove a new one in its place.

[00:10:41]Oh, I got to take this tie plate out.

[00:10:43]There we go.

[00:10:46]All right, now I can put the new tie in.

[00:10:48]This tie is made of ground contact pressure treated pine.

[00:10:52]Sure it won't last forever, but it'll probably last longer than the last one did.

[00:10:56]I'm going to put an AccuTie tie plate on top of it. These tie plates here have a have an arrow that points to the inside.

[00:11:05]Inside means in between the rails. That's the gauge side.

[00:11:12]Okay, if you're changing ties on a railroad, don't be an idiot like me. Put something underneath the tie to hold it up against the rail.

[00:11:20]Cuz it's really hard to do it this way.

[00:11:25]So, this is how not to do it.

[00:11:33]But, you do need to jam ballast underneath it after you change the tie.

[00:11:37]Otherwise, there's nothing holding it up.

[00:11:44]And for my next trick, I'll change two ties at once. Notice that at no time do my fingers ever leave my hand.

[00:12:26]And once again, don't be an idiot like me. Support your tie with something while you're trying to attach it to the rail.

[00:12:43]As the sun is setting over the mountain, we've got uh to take a look at our work area.

[00:12:55]All right. So, we started right here.

[00:12:57]And looks like I have to put that joint back together.

[00:13:03]Move along here.

[00:13:07]Redid this joint right here.

[00:13:10]Put a new tie in.

[00:13:13]I'll have to adjust the track through here a little bit.

[00:13:17]Kick it over.

[00:13:24]Oh, it's a little straight.

[00:13:26]Needs to be curved a little more.

[00:13:30]So, work on the curved geometry.

[00:13:33]The horizontal geometry.

[00:13:36]Uh let's see. I got three lengths of rail flipped around.

[00:13:42]Marked a bunch of bad ties.

[00:13:46]Looks like I just dumped a paint can there, didn't I? Doesn't it? Uh got a couple bad ones there, bad ones there.

[00:13:54]Yeah.

[00:13:55]Bunch of bad ones through here.

[00:14:00]There's some more bad ones up in here.

[00:14:04]So, we'll look back on the work area. Um I'm going to have to raise the track down here at the lower end of this curve.

[00:14:14]Pick it up a little bit, get it up out of the dirt.

[00:14:18]Let it drain a little better.

[00:14:20]Um the uh water drains down through here, right through here, and it kind of fouls up the the ballast in here, so I think I'm going to have to add some cross drainage right here.

[00:14:39]And that's going to fix that problem.

[00:14:44]And I can at the same time lift the main line up out of the dirt.

[00:14:50]And we will continue tackling this tomorrow.

[00:14:56]Well, here we are a month later, and I didn't get footage of flipping the rest of the rail. However, um we did get it done.

[00:15:05]Uh volunteer came in and and uh did most of the rest of the work.

[00:15:11]And we do have one more thing to do here, which we'll do in another video. Um these uh joint gaps are far too wide, and they're only like this temporarily.

[00:15:24]And we're going to take this rail here and cut it and move it over here. We'll cut it to length for what this rail wants.

[00:15:37]Which is basically the the next joint is right here.

[00:15:42]And then we'll um then we'll flip that rail and we'll put it over here and we'll make a new joint somewhere in here.

[00:15:52]But that is the topic of another video.

[00:15:55]And we might actually use um this rail.

[00:15:59]I don't know. This this one's half worn out, too.

[00:16:02]Uh so this is basically why um rail has two sides, why it's concentric. So you can flip it around and get some more use out of it.

[00:16:14]So that's basically the premise of the whole video.

[00:16:19]And as you can see, we replaced a bunch of the ties, but not all of them yet. I had to go make some more, so we had to stop, make some more ties.

[00:16:27]And that'll be in an upcoming video as well. So certainly stay tuned. There's a whole lot more action coming up here on the Millbrook Railroad including a drainage project coming up.

[00:16:40]We'll be using this drainage tile here for to create some cross drainage.

[00:16:47]So the ties maybe last longer down in that lower section.

[00:16:53]Certainly so the grade is less.

[00:16:57]So hopefully enjoyed today's video. If you did, please hit that thumbs up button.

[00:17:01]Share, subscribe. And if you'd like to see these videos earlier, you can go to patreon, patreon.com/millbrookrailroad, where paid members get early access to videos and some exclusive content. And of course, you can always join us over at millbrookrailroad.com where you can find merch and locomotives and other parts.

[00:17:24]Thanks for watching. We'll see you in the next video.