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Gold-painted points - where were they?

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Springs Branch

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Forecasts of ongoing hot weather reminded me that some lengths of running rail are now painted white to reduce the temperature by a few degrees to help avoid buckling etc.

In similar vein, I read some years ago (possibly in Modern Railways) that the points at certain junctions had been painted gold by BR / Railtrack / whoever was in charge of infrastructure at the time.

These switches were all at important junction, whose correct functioning would be critical to reliable operation of a wide part of the network - the idea being to focus the attention of track maintenance and engineering staff on these particular items of "gold-plated" equipment.

IIRC, one set of gold-painted points was at Woking, at the junction between the Portsmouth and Basingstoke lines.

Anyone know where else this stunt was tried?
And what was the approximate time period when it was done and how long it lasted?
(searching Google and within this Forum didn't throw up any clues)
 
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pdeaves

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Are you sure it was actually gold paint? Certain equipment is referred to as 'golden assets' to focus minds on making sure it doesn't break, but they aren't actually painted gold.
 

krus_aragon

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The only infrastructure I'm familiar within golden for would be the "golden spike" of finishing a railway, but those were largely ceremonial in nature.
 

Mcr Warrior

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The only infrastructure I'm familiar within golden for would be the "golden spike" of finishing a railway, but those were largely ceremonial in nature.
Presuming these were just painted gold, otherwise they would have got "removed" quite soon afterwards. Indeed are there any examples still out there of "golden spikes", perhaps in railway museums?
 

leezer3

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I'm reasonably certain the M&GNJRS have one in the Holt museum, although I don't know if it's on display.

It's IIRC local & a relatively recently acquisition, although I can't find it online at the minute....
 

RichA

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In Railtrack days there was a campaign that designated certain points as 'golden assets' as mentioned above, this would have been around 1997/98. The infrastructure itself was not painted gold, just referred to as Golden so it flagged up to staff that it was critical to running the service and thus received extra attention from maintenance and ops staff.
 

Springs Branch

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I do remember hearing about the focus on "golden assets" critical to the functioning of the network, but the instance I was thinking of at Woking did involve cracking open paint pots and painting bits of rail gold.

Perhaps this was some one-off publicity stunt for a campaign launch (presumably) by Railtrack for internal staff.
Or, just maybe, I read it in an April 1st edition of Modern Railways.

Anyhow, the initiative certainly doesn't seem to have been repeated, and may have been very temporary, based on the lack of any references or corroborating memories.
 

Taunton

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Presuming these were just painted gold, otherwise they would have got "removed" quite soon afterwards. Indeed are there any examples still out there of "golden spikes", perhaps in railway museums?
There are, inevitably, several examples of the Golden Spike from the completion of the first USA transcontinental railway in different US museums :)

Golden spike - Wikipedia
 

RT4038

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Weren't the crossovers installed at Ledburn Junction made of gold, considering their cost? Or was that just a rumour?
 
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