Wilmar Sugar Manufacturing Co., the largest sugar refiner in Australia, has donated a vintage Vibratool tamper to the two-foot gauge museum. Wilmar Sugar operates nearly 1,000 miles of two-foot gauge trackage in the state of Queensland to support its eight sugar mills.

The tamper has been moved by truck from the mill at Proserpine to the Port of Brisbane and will be shipped by ocean freight to the Port of New York, arriving there in mid-January 2021. It will then trucked to the Maine headquarters of the WW&F and prepared for service.

The WW&F has a homebuilt tamper that has seen extensive use, but it has very limited capabilities. The machine en route from Australia can surface , line and level track in a single operation. The Australian branch of Tamper Corp., a component of Harsco Corp., built this machine in 1975.

Incidentally, if any readers know of a Vibratool tamper in the back lot awaiting scrap or parting out, the WW&F would be interested in knowing this.

WOW! I had no idea Australia had sugar mills let alone such extensive network of 2 foot gauge track. That WW&F was able to get this track machine is fantastic. It will sure speed up track work. Outstanding!

This YouTube video shows a crossing of a 2' gauge sugar train over the 42" mainline in Queensland. The 2' has a drawbridge like crossing over the mainline. Video shows a train of each gauge and the operation of the crossing:

Sugar Cane Railway/QR Crossings - Meadowvale

More videos showing the 2' gauge trains can be found on YouTube.

Quite the loading gauge for the 2' trains!

Great post. Congrats to WW&F on the acquisition and hopefully is the Godsend it appears it will be. That crossing is awesome. Not sure if this would fly in most operations here, but it certainly is a cool design. Thanks for the original post and the link to the 2' downunder. Regards, John.

I think a narrow gauge line crossing a standard gauge mainline in the U. S. might be accomplished using what I call an "up-and-over" crossover. I don't know what the technical name is. Essentially, the rails of the lesser railroad bulge up to cross the heavier main with gaps for the mainline flanges to clear the rails of the crossing line. They are limited to 5-10 mph for the crossing railroad, and since it never touches the mainline rails there are no restrictions on the other line. I've seen it used in a couple of places in Ohio, one of the most notable ones is between two CSX lines, the former Big Four double-track main, and the Lorain branch of the CL&W sub in Grafton, Ohio. It's easy enough to see for yourself, it's pretty much right next to a public street grade crossing, so you can look at it without trespassing. The only potential problem I could see is if the wheels of the narrow gauge equipment were not of sufficient diameter to clear the gap over the standard gauge rails.

OWLS: "One Way Low Speed".

Regards,
Bob Milhaupt

Thanks for the clarification.

From Flickr, here is the page link:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/digitalrail/18733276129



Read the photo caption at the link above for more details, but on the 'low speed' line the wheel flanges are supporting the railcar through the crossing.

Wayne,

Great addition and really good find!

The WW&F has always been resourceful to get the job done.

Can't get the long reach hot riveter out of my mind. Could watch that work for hours!

Regards,

Randy

They had a very extensive network. Here’s a wonderful video showing a steam loco embarking on a grand tour of some of the lines. Well worth viewing!

https://youtu.be/7jb4o8cstGs

Another such installation can be found in Brampton, Ontario where the Orangeville & Brampton crosses the CNR mainline, which is a very significant line.

Crossing looks like the SEPTA Route 11 trolley-CSX Baltimore to Phila Main Line crossing in Darby PA. Trolleys routinely go through specialwork on their flanges but here the trolley tracks are cut and the trolley clumps through while the train glides. The crossing is not 90 degrees so both wheels on an axle don't bang through at the same time.

Here's a video of three trolleys and a train.

Note the extra-high wire to meet RR clearance and the catenary overhead construction account distance between line poles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpefQMbYF_g

Phil Mulligan

That version of the Darby diamond is much more recent, certainly since I was last over it in 2008. The Darby diamond, which was a traditional type of diamond in 2008, was a MofW headache for the division Road Master the entire time I was there. It was a custom item, made in Germany at the time and in need of being replaced every 18 to 24 months. There were slow orders over it almost as much as there weren't. It was over a soft spot and kept sinking. I heard CSX approached SEPTA more than once about cutting the trolley line back to before the grade crossing, but could never come to terms. I believe the line ends about a mile to the left of that scene. I think several months before I left they tried something different and dug down fairly deep, dumped a load of scrap steel and rail in the hole and poured concrete on top of that. Doing that, along with a different kind of diamond, may have solved the problems finally.

The problem with cutting the trolley line short is that Darby Loop (currently Darby Transportation Center) is a transit hub and the 11 Trolley is by far the busiest line serving the loop. So from a transit aspect it is unwise to cut the line back. The track also serves as a shortcut for cars from the 13 Trolley to get to Elmwood District (Carbarn) via Island Ave.

SEPTA and CSX did not come to terms because SEPTA did not want to cut the line back and abandon the connections at Darby Loop nor did they want to pay overtime per car per day to get the 13 cars from and to Elmwood via a less direct route. In 2018 11 Route ran 244 trips per weekday and 13 312 trips per weekday.

Phil Mulligan