Any old iron...
Join Date: May 2000
Location: Living In The Past
Age: 74
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A friend who works trackside on London Underground reckons that the cost of removing redundant track now exceeds its scrap value. Therefore, in many cases, it is disconnected from the active lines and simply left to rust and generally get overgrown. It doesn't present a very good image to travellers though !
Gnome de PPRuNe
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Too close to Croydon for comfort
Age: 58
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Originally Posted by Ancient Observer
Whilst I do not want to derail this thread, are we all sure it is on the right lines? Maybe diverted due to the Graduate Engineering works?
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: 4DME
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Once watched two scroats trying to load about two feet of rail into a shopping trolley presumably to go and weigh it in. They didn't succeed and were so concentrated on their actions they didn't see an approaching police van.
Join Date: Nov 1999
Location: UK
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No grease or lubricant of any kind is good nor applied on a rail head it is simply friction that keeps them shiny.
See and avoid
Join Date: Mar 2003
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“Why do steel railways not rust and fall apart?”
Why do steel railways not rust and fall apart? ? The Helpful Engineer
Why do steel railways not rust and fall apart? ? The Helpful Engineer
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: N/A
Posts: 4,553
The head of a rail these days goes through a heat treatment to prolong wear life, details here.
.https://www.nipponsteel.com/en/tech/...pdf/105-05.pdf
Railway defects handbook
https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/sys...19/tmc-226.pdf
.https://www.nipponsteel.com/en/tech/...pdf/105-05.pdf
Railway defects handbook
https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/sys...19/tmc-226.pdf
Join Date: May 2001
Location: south of Cirencester, north of Lyneham
Age: 75
Posts: 1,262
I believe scrap rail and chairs from old bullhead rail fetch about £50 to £100 per ton. Rail typically these days is around 120lb to the yard so you need to salvage a lot of it to make it worth collecting. I believe some heritage railways do, because of course. much of their labour is free.
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Mostly in my own imagination
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Originally Posted by treadigraph
Noticed several times recently that there are an amazing number of rusting lengths of old steel railway track and/or third rail strewn along the approaches to Woking station, along side the line or resting on the sleepers between each track's rails. Also noticed similar sights elsewhere on the Network Rail estate.
Just curious as to why it is left in situ, surely it has some reuse value as scrap metal?
Just curious as to why it is left in situ, surely it has some reuse value as scrap metal?
If they were run by women, then someone would be told to go and pick them all up because they made the place look untidy
Gnome de PPRuNe
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Too close to Croydon for comfort
Age: 58
Posts: 10,111
Thanks for answers! Just curious...
Mate recently asked if we'd heard of the Surrey Iron Railway and sent a link to a local newspaper item about it, supposedly one of Britain's first commercial railways. Well, yes I had, mostly because the 8' wall at the end of my garden supports the track bed of the Croydon to Merstham section - now used as an access road to people's garages. You could say I have ferrous at the bottom of my garden... Several commemorative bits in a local park.
Mate recently asked if we'd heard of the Surrey Iron Railway and sent a link to a local newspaper item about it, supposedly one of Britain's first commercial railways. Well, yes I had, mostly because the 8' wall at the end of my garden supports the track bed of the Croydon to Merstham section - now used as an access road to people's garages. You could say I have ferrous at the bottom of my garden... Several commemorative bits in a local park.
See and avoid
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: USA
Posts: 595
Meanwhile, some college students weren’t slow to take advantage of an idle streetcar:
The streetcar used to run down the Main Street that cut through the campus.
In the 1930s, Ken Wadleigh and four other MIT students welded a streetcar to its rails. They distracted the motorman and then set off thermite bombs to weld the wheels. Wadleigh became a dean at MIT.
