As a result of not being able to find compromise joint bars for ASCE 16lb to 20lb rail, Swanton Pacific Railroad has designed and had quotes for the production of bars. So far we don’t really like the unit cost for our needs. The unit cost gets better if more sets are produced.

Is there anyone else out there looking for 16 to 20 lb rail compromise joint bars? And if so how many sets? The best quote so far is about $43 per bar and there are four bars per set. This price was at the production of sixty sets.

Pete

Why? That small rail, wouldn't it be cheaper to weld two short pieces together and use standard joint bars, or make a jig and weld cut joint bars into comprise bars?
Mike Nix

You can also make passable ones out of flat plate that you cut to fit.

However... at $43 per pair, once you factor in materials and the time spent messing around to fabricate them, grind to fit, weld, whatever, you may well find it's more economical to just buy them and put your labor force to better use.

We are talking about "bars" less than an inch tall and probably 8" long. If I were in this situation I would have already found a piece of flat stock, ground it down to shape on the bench grinder and installed it, or if I had 20 lb. bars would have ground it down to fit the 16 lb. rail. No biggie!

Find somebody with a water jet or a plasma table and have them crank out a 4x8' sheets worth for you.

"If I were in this situation I would have already found a piece of flat stock, ground it down to shape on the bench grinder and installed it"

Ahh yes, the mechanical engineer's motto; "Bend to shape, grind to fit, and paint to hide".....

Yes, if all they need are a few (two, four) grinding something close to make a good fit is probably an "OK" choice.

And with a good eye and some patience you could probably grind some flat stock to just about the correct taper.

A joint bar is a "linear taper fit", it is not simply a bar cut to a shape. The angle of the edges is designed to match the angles of the rail base/head where they meet the web of the rail.

You could do a suitable job with simple tools (bench grinder) or spend real money for a machined job.

Originally these were drop forged with angle tolerances of maybe plus/minus 5 degrees and dimensional tolerances of maybe plus/minus 1/4 inch.

Machining replacements from bar stock seems like over kill, a good eye with a simple grinder can do +/- 5 degrees, +/- 1/4 inch.

Cheers, Kevin

thanks for the interesting replies so far - some notes I see are the price is for one bar not a pair.

we will be inspected by OSHA they are using the guide lines for small rail roads that was published as ASTM Rail Standards and they say no welding on the rail or bars.

we have a mile of 16lb rail , they no longer make 16 lb rail so we moved up to 20 lb. we have had to replace some rail that no longer meets the ASTM standards.

Pete

In all the years I've been doing this, I've never seen them quoted that way, as one comp bar isn't real useful. But that does make them a bit more costly. Still, having the right ones and not needing to waste a bunch of time could make it worth while.

BTW, have you tried Harmer Steel in Portland, OR? They like working with small rail etc. Then again, I imagine by the time you buy and ship them, you're going to be about the same cost.

we bought our rail from Harmer Steel, but they could not get compromise bars. every place we tried told us they could not do it.

when the wash out gets repaired stop by and help us relay our track

Pete

$43 is really not a bad price. Try Ohio Valley Trackwork 740-446-0181

They have made a bunch of comp bars for us mostly 80AS-60AS and their price was $60 per *bar* ($120 for the pair) but that's a lot more metal and a lot more machine shop time than a "toy" 16-20 bar.

The bar is fairly simple to make if you have a milling machine. You just take a piece of flat stock, probably for such light rail you could get away with 1/2" stock, and mill the top and bottom to match the head and base fishing angle (check the drawings, I think it is 13 degrees). You mill away more on one half of the bar than the other to create the small vertical offset and you have to play with the relative amounts on the field side vs the gauge side bar so that the smaller rail "sucks in" offset to one side horizontally --- you want the gauge faces of the rails to align. Since the head widths are slightly different, there will be a discontinuity on the field side.

Oh and of course you need to drill the holes for the bolts and make at least half of them into ovals so they mate with the track bolts (unless you are using hex-headed bolts?)

So when you think of all that machine shop time that's why these things are "pricey"!

Just about any shape can be cut by automated tools if you have a program to guide them and the right feedstock to cut them from. If these are items you will need in the future as well as today, might be worth the trouble to set yourselves up with a shop that can crank them out when you need them. Bevels milled correctly aren't a problem for this kind of work.

For those of us unfamiliar with compromise joint bars, does someone have a photo they could post?

That changes things, I would try the plasma cutter if the rules allow that, some can be setup to cut the 13 degree angle. It would be much cheaper.
If anyone welds joint bars as I suggested, a very experienced welder told me that if you weld steel of an unknown carbon content or steel that has cracked next to the weld bead, you should heat the weld area red hot and let it cool slowly to aneal it. Better a soft area than a weld breaking.

I have a copy of the ASTM standards as well, and my interpretation differs:

9.11.3 Cracked or Broken Joint Bars—Cracked or broken
joint bars shall be replaced. Joint bars shall not be welded.

The prohibition for welding fall under the heading of "cracked or broken joint bars" and the welding pertains to the repair of a cracked or broken bar. Adding weld buildup to a joint bar to make it fit a larger rail is not repairing a cracked or broken bar, so in my interpretation it not prohibited. It is in fact silent on the issue, perhaps because it was not something foreseen by the rulemakers.

I can see the desire to not weld a broken bar due to the difficulty in getting a weld sufficiently strong enough to be effective, but a pad weld to build up thickness does not affect the strength of the joint bar and thus I cannot see a reason for that prohibition.