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Gandy Dancer
Gandy dancer is a slang term used for early railroad workers in the United States and Canada, more formally referred to as ''section hands'', who laid and maintained railroad tracks in the years before the work was done by machines. The British equivalents of the term ''gandy dancer'' are ''navvy'' (from ''navigator''), originally builders of canals, or ''inland navigations'', for builders of railway lines, and '' platelayer'' for workers employed to inspect and maintain the track. In the Southwestern United States and Mexico, Mexican and Mexican-American track workers were colloquially '' traqueros''. In the United States and Canada, early section crews were often made up of recent immigrants and ethnic minorities who vied for steady work despite poor wages and working conditions, and hard physical labor. The Chinese, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans in the Western United States, the Irish in the Midwestern United States, African Americans in the Southern United States, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corporation
Simmons-Boardman Publishing is an American publisher, specializing in industry publications. It is headquartered in New York City, New York, and has offices in Chicago, Omaha, and Falmouth, Cornwall, UK. The company was created from a merger of '' The Railroad Gazette'' and ''Railway Age'' in 1908; the company's name was derived from ''Gazette''s vice president, E. A. Simmons, and editor, William H. Boardman. Publications *''Bar Business Magazine'' *''International Railway Journal'' *''Marine Log'' *''Railway Age ''Railway Age'' is an American trade magazine for the rail transport industry. It was founded in 1856 in Chicago (the United States' major railroad hub) and is published monthly by Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corporation. History The magazine ...'' *'' Railway Track & Structures'' *''Sign Builder Illustrated Magazine'' Mergers and acquisitions * Davison Publishing (2006) References Professional and trade magazines Companies based in New York City {{US-m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ballast Tamper
A tamping machine or ballast tamper, informally simply a tamper, is a self-propelled, rail-mounted machine used to pack (or tamp) the track ballast under railway tracks to make the tracks and roadbed more durable and level. Prior to the introduction of mechanical tampers, this task was done by manual labour with the help of beaters. As well as being faster, more accurate, more efficient and less labour-intensive, tamping machines are essential for the use of concrete sleepers since they are too heavy (usually over ) to be lifted by hand. At its most basic, a tamping machine only packs the ballast. Some modern machines, sometimes known as tamper-liners or tamping and lining machines, also correct the alignment of the rails to make them parallel and level, in order to achieve a more comfortable ride for passengers and freight and to reduce the mechanical strain applied to the rails by passing trains. This is done by finding places where the sleepers have sunk from the weight of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spike Maul
A spike maul is a hand tool used to drive railroad spikes in railroad track work. It is also known as a spiking hammer. Description Spike mauls are akin to sledge hammers, typically weighing from with handles long. They have elongated double faced hardened steel heads. The head is typically over long to allow the user to drive spikes on the opposite side of the rail without breaking the handle. Some spike mauls have symmetrical heads, but most have a slightly longer thinner side and a shorter larger diameter side of equal weight. The long side allows a user to spike over abnormally tall rails, and to drive spikes down next to highway crossing planks. The shorter side provides more surface area which requires less accuracy for normal spiking. There are two typical patterns of spike mauls: * Bell: The more common, bell spike mauls are mostly cylindrical in shape. * Standard: Which feature a square cross section, and a squared tapered end opposite the normal driving face ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maintenance Of Way
Maintenance of way (commonly abbreviated to MOW, also known as "Permanent Way Maintenance" or "PWM" in Britain) refers to the maintenance, construction, and improvement of rail infrastructure, including tracks, ballast, grade, and lineside infrastructure such as signals and signs. Track Railroad tracks consist of multiple key components: a track bed, and ballast forming the foundation of the tracks. Then the tracks themselves are place on the ballast, the tracks consist of a railroad tie, fasteners to secure the rails to the ties, such as spikes or clips, rails, which are assembled on a bed of ballast, which is in turn on a track bed that supports it all. Ballast is a material used to support the ties and rails, and keep them in place. It is also a key part of drainage along railway lines to ensure the integrity of the tracks during rain and other wet weather. Ballast is often a crushed stone. Stones need to be irregularly shaped, in order to increase friction that holds th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fulcrum (mechanics)
A lever is a simple machine consisting of a beam or rigid rod pivoted at a fixed hinge, or '' fulcrum''. A lever is a rigid body capable of rotating on a point on itself. On the basis of the locations of fulcrum, load, and effort, the lever is divided into three types. It is one of the six simple machines identified by Renaissance scientists. A lever amplifies an input force to provide a greater output force, which is said to provide leverage, which is mechanical advantage gained in the system, equal to the ratio of the output force to the input force. As such, the lever is a mechanical advantage device, trading off force against movement. Etymology The word "lever" entered English around 1300 from . This sprang from the stem of the verb ''lever'', meaning "to raise". The verb, in turn, goes back to , itself from the adjective ''levis'', meaning "light" (as in "not heavy"). The word's primary origin is the Proto-Indo-European stem , meaning "light", "easy", or "nimble", amo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Railway Workers With Tie Tongs
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport using wheeled vehicles running in tracks, which usually consist of two parallel steel rails. Rail transport is one of the two primary means of land transport, next to road transport. It is used for about 8% of passenger and freight transport globally, thanks to its energy efficiency and potentially high speed.Rolling stock on rails generally encounters lower frictional resistance than rubber-tyred road vehicles, allowing rail cars to be coupled into longer trains. Power is usually provided by diesel or electric locomotives. While railway transport is capital-intensive and less flexible than road transport, it can carry heavy loads of passengers and cargo with greater energy efficiency and safety. Precursors of railways driven by human or animal power have existed since antiquity, but modern rail transport began with the invention of the steam locomotive in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 19th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Derailment
In rail transport, a derailment is a type of train wreck that occurs when a rail vehicle such as a train comes off its rails. Although many derailments are minor, all result in temporary disruption of the proper operation of the railway system and they are a potentially serious hazard. A derailment of a train can be caused by a collision with another object, an operational error (such as excessive speed through a curve), the mechanical failure of tracks (such as broken rails), or the mechanical failure of the wheels, among other causes. In emergency situations, deliberate derailment with derails or catch points is sometimes used to prevent a more serious accident. History The first recorded train derailment in history is known as the Hightstown rail accident in New Jersey that occurred on 8 November 1833. The train was traveling between Hightstown and Spotswood, New Jersey, and derailed after an axle broke on one of the carriages as a result of a journal box catching fir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Centripetal Force
Centripetal force (from Latin ''centrum'', "center" and ''petere'', "to seek") is the force that makes a body follow a curved trajectory, path. The direction of the centripetal force is always orthogonality, orthogonal to the motion of the body and towards the fixed point of the instantaneous osculating circle, center of curvature of the path. Isaac Newton coined the term, describing it as "a force by which bodies are drawn or impelled, or in any way tend, towards a point as to a centre". In Newtonian mechanics, gravity provides the centripetal force causing astronomical orbits. One common example involving centripetal force is the case in which a body moves with uniform speed along a circular path. The centripetal force is directed at right angles to the motion and also along the radius towards the centre of the circular path. The mathematical description was derived in 1659 by the Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens. Formula From the kinematics of curved motion it is known ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Track Ballast
Track ballast is the material which forms the trackbed upon which railroad ties (UK: sleepers) are laid. It is packed between, below, and around the ties. It is used to bear the compression load of the railroad ties, rails, and rolling stock; to facilitate drainage; and keep down vegetation that can compromise the integrity of the combined track structure. Ballast also physically holds the track in place as the trains roll over it. Not all types of railway tracks use ballast. A variety of materials have been used as track ballast, including crushed stone, washed gravel, bank run (unwashed) gravel, torpedo gravel (a mixture of coarse sand and small gravel), slag, chats, coal cinders, sand, and burnt clay. The term "ballast" comes from a nautical term for the stones used to stabilize a ship. Construction The appropriate thickness of a layer of track ballast depends on the size and spacing of the ties, the amount of traffic on the line, and various other factors. Track ballast ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
