Making Tracks (1956)

[enniscorthyman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PZtZ0cCJU8

[Mayner]

I love the idea of a PW gang that does not seem to get their hands or clothes dirty:)

 

Those little Ruston & Hornsby diesels were unique to the Western Region and classed as track machines.

 

The MGWR set up a mechanical track re-laying system at the end of WW1 a depot in Mullingar (later scrapyard) with overhead gantry for assembling and dismantling track panels and single line track re-laying train with a conveyor system to transport track panels to and from the head of steel and a cantilever gantry to lift out the old sections and place the new.

 

The machine seems to havee been reasonably successful the Midland engineer sold the right to the system to Morris Cranes who built a similar machine for the LNER in 1929

0.17

 

The LNER machine seems to have lasted into the 1960s http://www.leedsmrs.org/jpegs/Gallery/AlanSmith/P/Ponteland%20plant%20exhib%20Morris%20Tracklayer%201961.jpg

 

The GSR seem to have mainly used the machine mainly for track lifting on the Midland, the crane was dismantled and the Mullingar depot converted into a scrap yard

Edited March 3, 2013 by Mayner