Hi,

I was watching "Night Passage" with Jimmy Stewert. One scene shows them laying track.

I was wondering if anyone had every set up a full sized track display (maybe 3 rail lengths) showing the parts of track being put together. If there was a video such as "Night Passage" or "How The West Was Won" (1965) associated with it, I was wondering how effective/popular the display would be.

A demonstration of lifting rail and driving spikes would be possible.

FWIW

Doug vV

The CA State Railroad Museum has a nice one, scroll down to near the bottom of this page for a photo.

http://www.flickriver.com/photos/stride ... 105317730/

Generally speaking, I think a video would be best suited for imparting the knowledge of what is involved, although this display does do pretty well.

Hi,

I'd forgotten about that display.

With the younger seeming to be touchy feely, I was wondering if such a display with recreations of the tools so they can pick them up.

Doug vV

Only if you have a host to interpret the display and keep an eye on the youth (of whatever age) and stop them from running off with the tools, using the tools to hurt each other or from hurting themselves.

The CSRM exhibit seems more to show track repair than rail laying. NSRM, on the other hand, shows an end-of-track scene with a rail car, reconstructed with the iron remains of an old V&T rail car--which may well have come originally from the CP. This particular V&T rail car was the one used in the movie Union Pacific--in another movie version of laying track. Unfortunately, at best, that scene is inaccurate in the way it shows track being laid. While, as I recall, it shows track laid with square joints, they were spiking in front of the rail car (rather than behind it), and spiking before the rails were spliced (it was done the other way), and the movie does not follow the specific sequence to the order spikes were driven (moving from line side to gauge side). And no one (on the CP at least, when they laid 10 miles in one day) hit a spike more than once (after which he moved to the same spike in the next panel).

The NSRM scene is seen here (second picture) http://www.inetours.com/Carson-City/sli ... useum.html

Admittedly, the NSRM exhibit itself is not self explanatory. Not enough information to explain how they really did it.

And no one tells the story of how David J. Sullivan showed Charlie Crocker exactly how Jack Casement was able to lay over four miles a day (at a time when the best the CP could do was a mile a week).

Come to the WW&F Railway Museum (Alna, ME) this weekend and experience it yourself!

We'll be laying about 1200' of new mainline track, plus leveling/tamping some yard track. We may even lay some additional yard track if we finish those projects.

Can't make it this year? We just purchased about 2 track miles of 60# rail - the last loads of which are likely arriving as I am typing this. We'll be laying track for many years to come each Spring and Fall.

That said, the museum remains open to the public during our work weekends. Some visitors have been known to stick around and help out. At the very least, it allows our visitors to see all phases of track construction.

More details at http://www.wwfry.org.

I participated in a track construction and spike driving display on the Toledo, Lake Erie & Western operation in Grand Rapids, Ohio, about 2000. I worked on the track crew a few summers in high school and for one special occasion weekend, can't recall the event now, we had a display like you describe setup. I was just ties arranged in the grass with tie plates and rails. I know we didn't have ballast and I'm pretty sure we didn't have more than 20 feet of rail.