Project will speed up trains through San Angelo, Texas

Written by jrood

Rotted wood was the only thing holding the rails together, the San Angelo Standard Times reports. Now government entities have secured funds to put in new railroad ties, new railroad crossings, new rails and a new bridge, with construction having already begun near downtown San Angelo, Texas.

"The railroad crossings
are part of the $1 million that we received from Congressman (Mike) Conaway’s
office," said E’Lisa Smetana, the San Angelo Metropolitan Planning Organization
director. "The construction on the crossings will start Oct. 1, 2010, and be
completed by Dec. 31, 2010."

Motorists can expect to
see the crossings closed when the new concrete crossings are installed, and the
company doing the work, Trac-Work, will coordinate with city emergency
personnel to let them know what is closed and when, Smetana said.

The railway ties are
being replaced by the Texas Department of Transportation, she said.

"It’s going to make it go
to where (trains) could only go 5 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour" coming
through San Angelo, said David Wood, president of the Railway Museum of San
Angelo.

Crews recently replaced
track and ties where the line goes past the museum, which is in the old Santa
Fe-Orient train depot at 703 S. Chadbourne St. Wood said federal regulations
control the speed of trains based on the quality of the track.

It was taking trains two
to three days, he said, to get from San Angelo to a junction near Coleman, less
than 100 miles.

"They were going down as
low as two to three miles an hour because parts were in such bad shape, and
they didn’t want to derail," Wood said.

He said trains might be
able to go in a few hours to a location that once took them a few days.

Wood said that about a
year ago, about one railroad tie out of every 20 was taken out. This time one
out of every three or four railroad ties were removed. He said he saw the
foreman spray-marking each tie by hand, signaling which ones he wanted out.

"Most of the ties that
they’re taking out are from 1955 or 1956. They have date nails," Wood said.

He said date nails were
used up until about the 1970s so workers could tell whether a railroad tie had
outlived its usefulness – after a 20-year life span, for instance. Wood said he
didn’t see the crew take out a single tie whole; all of them came out
splintered and falling apart.

"Which is dangerous,
because that’s what holds the rails together," Wood said. "If they spread
apart, they could have a derail."

Wood said that up until
the 1920s, railroad maintenance was mostly manually done.

"In the old days they had
a pick and shovel and some pry bars. They still use the same style pry bars. Basically,
it was by hand. They would shove the ties back in by hand and use a funny
looking hammer with a real long, skinny, pointed head to drive the spikes down
with.

"With two men on either
side, they would get into a rhythm and sing a chant or a rhythm. One would hit
and pull back and go ‘bing, bing, bing’ pretty quick," Wood said.

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