Railway Baseplate Queries

[Alex Neia]

Hello Everyone

Anyone out there who is knowledgeable about railway baseplates? I have a couple of queries about them:-

I was looking in a PWI book under the baseplate section and it kept referring to flat center section and alternative center section does anyone know what the difference is?

I was looking at a drawing of a railway crossing and next to the baseplate designation it had a flange width for example [Baseplate VA378, Flange Width 448], [Baseplate VA336, Flange Width 406] etc what does the Flange width refer to in the context of a crossing????

Any help will be great?

Thanks in advance

Railway Baseplate Queries

 

[Trog]

The types of centre section are :-

1, Flat.
2, A 14mm raised section with no housing for a Pandrol clip.
3, A single Pandrol clip housing.
4, Two Pandol clip housings.

Which you use of 2, 3, or 4 will depend on the width of the gap between the running rails in VB, VC and VD baseplates. VA baseplates are all type 1.

A VA baseplate is a vertical flatbottom baseplate designed for use under a vertical S&C crossing, and can carry 2, 3 or 4 rails.

They tend to be used near the nose of built up and part welded crossings, and under the whole length of cast crossings. As where there is a gap between the running rails it is better to use VB, VC or VD baseplates that have housings between the line of the rails so allowing the inner rail feet to also be clipped down.

The number in the name as in VA406 is the distance between the outside head faces of the two outer most rails, the baseplate will be 336mm wider than this.