BRX
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Seems that idea is not original, £25 a pop on eBay:salvage, chop into 150mm pieces and sell as 'genuine' Brunel souvenirs?
50mm genuine Brunel broad rail track. 150 years old. Very heavy.
They had metal ties to keep the baulks in gauge, and by all accounts at the time 7' gauge was very smooth running. I am unsure whether any non GWR Standard gauge track (with the exception of mixed gauge track) used bridge rail?It must have been considerably less flexible sideways than conventional track - does anybody know whether they had a problem in forming curves?
Early bridge rails were wrought iron and then made from steel. I don't have a figure for the weight per yard.What exactly is it made of? What is the weight per yard/metre?
I spotted this length adapted as an end of run fence post near where the abandoned section of the Ruabon - Llangollen line crossed the Llangollen Canal. Photographed last year it looks as though someone has been trying to pinch a section as it has two slices which look purposefully cut but the attempt appears to have been abandoned.Yes, loads and loads of the stuff around the old GW as fence posts or fence supports etc. Even alongside lines that were never Broad Gauge. Swindon must have had copious amounts which they put to good use around the whole GW system.
No bids yet with £25 as a reserve.Seems that idea is not original, £25 a pop on eBay:
50mm genuine Brunel broad rail track.GWR memorabilia. 150 years old. | eBay
Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for 50mm genuine Brunel broad rail track.GWR memorabilia. 150 years old. at the best online prices at eBay! Free delivery for many products!www.ebay.co.uk
I guess if it gets a bid, whoever did the damage shown in #16 will be back with a bigger angle grinder.No bids yet with £25 as a reserve.
Maybe on some bridges? interesting question. Baulk track - albeit not with bridge rail - survived at Paddington until very recently indeed, not sure of a date but it may have been until the first wires went up. It has a major advantage in that the rails don't sag between sleepers under the weight of the train, so there's less rolling resistance - but iirc it was comparatively harsh because it was so unyielding - don't forget the vertical foundation poles holding the baulks - fixed somewhat with better suspension & wheel profiles, I'd think, but I'd like to know the rate of broken rails vs bullhead & chairs. Modern slab track could easily lay the rail on a continuous pad so there must be a good reason it isn't done.They had metal ties to keep the baulks in gauge, and by all accounts at the time 7' gauge was very smooth running. I am unsure whether any non GWR Standard gauge track (with the exception of mixed gauge track) used bridge rail?
Brunel's version was different, with the rail sitting directly on the longitudinal timbers and held down by screws through the holes visible in the OP's photo. With the rail being shallower than the bullhead type used on contemporary sleeper track, it would have sagged or broken under the weight of passing trains if supported intermittently on sleepers.This is the arrangement at my local station (loughborough junction) where the track passes over a bridge. I think this is "baulk track". With normal rail though.
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I did some research into this and it looks like the GWR salvaged bridge rail from lines they converted to standard gauge and put it to good use as fence posts, particularly restraining posts. The holes were where they screwed the rails to longitudinal timber baulks, rather than the now conventional transverse sleepers. There's a lot of it survives along the Oxford Worcester and Wolverhampton railway.
Baulk track - albeit not with bridge rail - survived at Paddington until very recently indeed, not sure of a date but it may have been until the first wires went up. It has a major advantage in that the rails don't sag between sleepers under the weight of the train, so there's less rolling resistance -
It has a major advantage in that the rails don't sag between sleepers under the weight of the train, so there's less rolling resistance - but iirc it was comparatively harsh because it was so unyielding - don't forget the vertical foundation poles holding the baulks - fixed somewhat with better suspension & wheel profiles, I'd think
Apart from at the rail ends of jonted track of course. One of the major benefits of CWR.Ordinary track does not sag significantly over distances less than several sleeper spacings.
Ordinary track does not sag significantly over distances less than several sleeper spacings. The advantage of the continuous wooden support came from the need for lots of rails arising well before the development of processes for producing large quantities of reliably and repeatably high quality steel to make them out of; the continuous resilient support relaxed the requirements for the material that was available. However it is not as good at distributing the load over a large area of ground as conventional transverse sleepering, and it certainly did sag over the distance between the points where the foundation poles held it up, so the trains started going along boing-boing-boing. It didn't take them too long to realise that those poles were not a good idea, and institute a programme of taking them out again, which I seem to remember they found to be such a complete pain to do that they were better off just moving the track a few inches to the side, where there was room to, so it no longer rested on them.