Rebuilding a railroad track.

[Clayton Berry]

This is cool, so I thught I'd share.  Not sure where it fits.  Move it if you must.

[Steven Kientz]

Equipment like that would have made easy work of taming the west.

[john e. holliday]

Where my son works is next to the railroad tracks along I-35 in Shawnee, KS.  There are two sets of tracks and they were replacing the ties.  We are still using the old wood ties here and to watch that machine pull the spike, lift the rail and shove the old tie out.  Then put the new tie in.  They were doing every other tie with this machine.  Further back the unit was putting in the spike.  Don't think John Henry could drive a spike that hard.  Then came the other unit doing the same with the ties that weren't replaced with the first one.  Then came the machine that made sure all was right and put the gravel back in place.  What I would like to see is the machine that lays the new track.  Can you imagine a rail the length of the train.  Wouldn't think those rails were that flexible.  I liked the video.  Thanks. 

[YakNine]

I maintain this type of equipment for a living, A couple good operators can replace a gang of 35 to 40 men and do it quicker and just as accurate and if the machine has a lazer liner they are more accurate. Powerful machines and very unforgiving if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time they will take you to the morgue in several baggies. T.J.

[YakNine]

Well I watched the video when I got home , Thats a lot bigger than what we run, we dont use concrete ties very often for freight rail roads as they cant take the pounding that the wood ties take. I do have a few of the clip squeezers that you saw towards the end of the video but we never replace everything we change the bad ones and leave the rest, thats European subsidized passenger track, one week of their budget would run my shop for a year! T.J.