How to Tamp Into and Out of a Railroad Bridge or Crossing

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:25]at a high range.

[00:00:27]Throttle here.

[00:00:33]And here we go. Train just went through here at Malpost 8. head out. We're heading up to the west side of bridge one and uh trains not going back to the mine.

[00:00:54]They've ran coal almost non-stop trains for the last week and a half.

[00:01:01]had a little bit of delay here and there, not much because of barge availability, but for the most part, they ran trains non-stop. Today, uh, prep is going down for some maintenance.

[00:01:21]All right, so I've got the rest of the day track up there. I like uh to go up there that far away. I got to track travel about 7 milesi.

[00:01:39]My uh buddy's going to be following me up in the regulator.

[00:01:44]I was parked on that side of him in the siding. So, he's going to come out. He's going to be following me up.

[00:01:51]All right.

[00:01:53]And they're calling for some severe storms here later this afternoon.

[00:01:58]We'll see what happens. Yesterday it was 90. The day before it was 90° Fahrenheit. And the air conditioner worked fairly decent in here.

[00:02:10]It was uh not at all unbearable. So that's good.

[00:02:15]That's a real good thing.

[00:02:22]>> Yeah. We'll see what happen.

[00:02:23]>> All right. Today's the tamping lesson.

[00:02:25]Uh, everybody take out your notepad, pens, pencils, uh, and let's keep track of this cuz you guys are going to want to know. We're going to show you how to tamp into a bridge and out of a bridge.

[00:02:41]All right. Uh, this is bridge one. And I want you to notice first of all these timbers in relation to a regular tie. A regular tie is 8 and 1/2 ft long. These are called bridge approach timbers. The bridge approach timbers are 10footers.

[00:03:07]I think they put a couple uh longer ones up here, but typically they're 10 foot long. And what we'll do, maybe they didn't have enough 10footers when they did this. Uh, this was redone here about four years ago, so they're they're long. That look like they're 12footers off of that, which is all right. There's nothing wrong with that.

[00:03:29]But they're typically 10t in length, and I'll show you why up here when we come out. Uh, I used to have seven 7 years ago and before that, I almost always had a ground man standing out here watching me tamping into a bridge and out of the bridge for over seven years. I haven't had anybody. So, but that's all right.

[00:03:54]That's all right. Okay. Uh, so I would always tamp into the bridge like if we were coming in here because a guy out here could watch. Now, I've learned over the years that when you're tamping into a bridge, the best thing to do for me alone is to start right there at that timber and work back tent backwards.

[00:04:20]Uh going into now on the other side when I'm going out, I will start right at the first timber right after the bridge and work that way. So anyway, it seems to work out better cuz what you don't want to what you want to avoid at all costs is raising this track out here up too high so that you going like this and then down onto the bridge. That has been done in the past, not by me, but uh former guys way back attempted raise it up real high going into bridge 12 and uh that's what you had. And uh also a couple guys way in the past have raised it into crossings. This what I'm going to talk to you today about is also uh good for crossings. These uh bridge approaches are really hard to keep up because everything back here is solid on the bridge. And then you got here where you got a little bit of flex. So that's not a good thing. You like to keep this as solid as possible. And that is one of the things that uh is very difficult for our track with 14 bridges is to keep all these bridge approaches up and tamped up really well. So anyway, that's where we are at now.

[00:05:34]Uh yeah, so when I'm coming off, I adjust my light so I can get a real nice match into it. And uh when I'm backing up, I'm saying or tamping into the bridge, but I'm actually tamping in reverse.

[00:05:56]Okay. So, yeah, I can get a real nice match there. I'm not going to overlift the track. And uh when I'm going off the bridge, I can adjust that leg down to zero. And I'll show you here how to do that in just a bit. and uh know where my track is so I don't get too much of a lift on that end of the bridge. All right, let's get right into it. I'm setting my machine up here and uh we'll go from there. All right, I got my light out front at almost zero.

[00:06:31]Zero. Uh that's the light out there. All right. So, what I'm saying at zero here, this needle here is showing me where this rail over here, the north rail is.

[00:06:43]And this needle showing me where the left rail is in relation to this rail.

[00:06:49]So, when it's zero, I'm going to pick it up about that high.

[00:06:55]All right. Now, what I'm going to do, I'm going to make a clamp up here with my jack beam. See where that picks the rail up.

[00:07:04]see what I got.

[00:07:06]I'm not going to actually squeeze anything until I make that first clamp and make sure we're not yanking this thing up.

[00:07:15]So, we're going to clamp and we're going to watch our jack beam.

[00:07:19]We're going to watch our mass follower and see how high it picks up. And we're going to watch our needles. Got all that clamp.

[00:07:29]Okay, very good. Got zero.

[00:07:33]I'm going to unclamp. I'm going to pick that up just a little bit higher.

[00:07:38]1/2 inch. All right. So, I raised my lift up, my light up. So, I dropped this needle down, which I expected it to do.

[00:07:45]Now, we're going to clamp.

[00:07:48]Let's see where we're at.

[00:07:52]Yeah, that's just about perfect. All right.

[00:08:06]put some extra squeezes. Now, here, this is a production switch tamper. So, I'm going to use this to work my outside work head out. I'm going to bring this one in. That one in a little bit. And the outside one out there, I'm going to take out. So, that's why your long your longer timbers so you can get extra rock.

[00:08:28]under these timbers.

[00:08:37]Okay, bring that in. Bring this in. I'm going to pull this one in. Now, typically tamping, you would not want to tamp the center of these ties, but being it's a bridge approach, you want to put as much rock as you possibly can under all of the timber.

[00:08:57]Does that make sense?

[00:09:02]Okay, we're going to uncclamp index the head to the next one. Uh, this needles came up just a little bit. This is in really good shape for over on this rail.

[00:09:14]So, we're going to clamp here. Watch it.

[00:09:16]Don't do anything till after you're done clamp picked it up. We're green.

[00:09:23]That's how we do it.

[00:09:33]Pull this one outside one out a little bit. Pull this one in a little bit.

[00:09:38]This over to the center. And take this one out.

[00:09:44]And utilizing the tools like this. That's how you would tamp a turnout by maneuvering the tools in and out. Okay, clamp again.

[00:10:04]Now I come off a joint over here. All right, that's not good. See if we can get that jack beam off of that bolt.

[00:10:14]I moved the jack beam ahead. See if it come off.

[00:10:19]There we got it. Okay, great.

[00:10:24]All righty. And we'll do this for all of the 10-ft bridge approach timbers that we have on this end. Okay. Pull that in.

[00:10:35]Pull that in. Pull that in. Pull that in.

[00:10:50]All right. Now, what I got to watch over here, I don't know if you can see down there. Uh, I've got this tool in a little bit. Just barely missing the web of the rail. So, and I got a rail anchor there. So, I got to have to push that out just a little bit so I can index the head, if that makes sense.

[00:11:10]Unclamped. All right. There you have it.

[00:11:13]Let me get this going. Finished up. But that's how you do it.

[00:11:19]All right. I'm still at half inch left.

[00:11:22]Uh I think I hit this come off that bridge real nice. So I've gone through my long timbers. I'm ready to start just tamping ties. Again, I will not tamp the center of the ties. Um a lot of guys don't like that. So they don't they won't want the tie to be like this. But anyway, you know, on the bridges, you got to put an even amount of ballast under those long long timbers. So anyway, now I'm going to start to run my lift up. I'm going to run my light out up here and I'm going to start raising track. And as I go out here gradually, I made a video on how to do that.

[00:11:59]I'll raise it a/ inch at a time. I'll tamp for 12 ties. Then I'll raise it another 1/2 inch till I get the final lift, which I want. It's probably going to be about 2 and 12 to 3 in lift up through there. I got a good bit of rock to work with. How about that?

[00:12:16]Well, there you go. I think it looks really, really good. That's perfect, actually. Um, looks great. So, I've got my lift going up here and uh getting some rock under the ties. That's what you want to say to your regulator to come up. He's working down below, but uh he's it'll be a while before he needs to be up here, but he'll get this all filled back in and uh we'll see where we go. Anyway, I've got uh 2 and 1/2 in lift on my track going up through here.

[00:12:48]And uh so far that looks like it's pretty good.

[00:12:54]See down here? I'll put a good bit of rock down under the ties. You can see that.

[00:13:00]All right, I got a ways to go. That's curve nine up there. So, I'll pick up the curve 9 plot tag and tamp up into the entry sparrow on curve 9, too. So, I'm going to be here a little while.

[00:13:13]That's all right.

[00:13:25]About five more cars. AJ Now three more cars.

[00:13:52]That looks pretty good down through there. He got enough rock to fill it all in. But I don't have enough rock there for another nice lift on it. Going to have to uh get them to dump that again for me.

[00:14:06]So going up here and uh do another spot while I got time.

[00:14:16]Okay, I came up here. I was going to start Well, I did start down at the sign. Come up to there about about in there.

[00:14:27]And uh that last railing things went uh goofy goofy on me. Uh the outside workhead on this side wanted to stay down. It didn't want to come up.

[00:14:41]These three over here would come up. The work heads would come up. This one would stay down. I was able to get it up each time, but after the third time, then uh I lost all my DC power, DC control power. The uh tripped.

[00:15:02]I got it reset. Tamp the other tie. Same deal. Workg went down, stayed down. All of them stayed down. The DC control tripped.

[00:15:14]Reset it. Of course, when that happens, the jack beam stays clamped to the rail and uh wasn't a good situation.

[00:15:25]Anyway, uh got it reset, tried it again, same thing happened. So, uh I don't know what's going on with that deal.

[00:15:35]I'd say uh I know one thing. It's uh it's lunchtime, so I'm going to take a break here for lunch, but um looks like it's starting to rain already. So, I'm not going to go any I'm lerary about doing any more till I get this thing figured out. And uh this is uh I'm going to have to do some study on this.

[00:16:03]I've had these off and on various times trip before, especially the clamps. They uh clamps on your jack beam in and out.

[00:16:12]This one here. Uh but I've had the DC uh a long long long time ago, but uh I don't know. All right. Anyway, I went uh already today I went over it above the Call of Duty and said it's lunchtime and uh we'll see where we go from there. All right, get my windshield window washed there from the rain. This is what we tamped down to the bridge this morning and then I tamped the other end of this curve and went up there and tried to do that. Uh yeah, this looks great. Looks really good. Looks really good. Uh did a good job on this.

[00:17:06]Did a real good job on this.

[00:17:09]I think uh we're going to have to dump some more rock here and I'll lift it up again. But uh here at some point in time, let some trains run over it for about a week and see what it looks like.

[00:17:18]Revisit it. Uh anyway, I think uh I got a problem with the limit switch on my outside workhead and it's the top limit switch. So, um I'm going to need a ladder to fix that and I don't have a ladder with me tomorrow. Um got to I was planning on taking the tamper back to the harbor anyway to get fuel.

[00:17:46]I just had enough fuel for today. So, I wasn't going to do it today. But anyway, yeah. And uh with it raining out, I'm not going to climb that step ladder in the rain. I don't think that'd be too safe. A little slippery. So, anyway, by the time we get back to Mile State Siding, regulators out in front of me.

[00:18:05]He's heading back and get everything situated and buttoned up. Uh it will be close to our quick time. So, we'll work on that project tomorrow. I really don't understand why the DC power control tripped, but uh limit switch is probably why the work head didn't want to come up. Maybe it just boogered boogered itself up. That's tampering. All right, have a really good day and thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning in and watching. And we weren't supposed to get rain this early in the day, but here it is. Oh well. All right.

[00:18:51]Have a really good day.