Bullhead rail

[McRhu]

Hello Mr D6130.... Herewith a picture of a FB/BH checkrail fitting. It was all one piece and accommodated pan clips on the outside.This was taken on a work's level crossing by the Clydesdale Tubeworks at New Stevenston, giving access to a huge flat-topped bing. By this time the track had been out of use for many years and had been roundly pillaged. Soon after this most of these chairs were broken.

 

[D6130]

Hello Mr D6130.... Herewith a picture of a FB/BH checkrail fitting. It was all one piece and accommodated pan clips on the outside.This was taken on a work's level crossing by the Clydesdale Tubeworks at New Stevenston, giving access to a huge flat-topped bing. By this time the track had been out of use for many years and had been roundly pillaged. Soon after this most of these chairs were broken.

Thanks Mr McRhu. I knew I could rely on you to find something relevant from the once huge network of railways in (formerly) industrial North Lanarkshire. I wonder what other permanent way gems are still lurking amongst the weeds in Wishaw or the mud in Motherwell? Over to you Forum members!

 

[McRhu]

D6130... It is always a pleasure to be of service Here is a long shot from the same location. At the risk of thread drift here are another two pics from the same location showing the kind of bullhead depredations a careless JCB can inflict during a botched dismantling. These were taken at the old Clydesdale Tubeworks' sidings: subsumed by grass and birch though they were. As to the wealth of archeologically imbedded artefacts in North Lanarkshire... there is indeed an abundance. I have many pics of the abovementioned line to Ravenscraig (unfortunately mostly after closure) but I remember finding a section of BS110a pointwork Rail deep in the mud, nearby on the site of a line closed and dismantled in the late 1950s (and then buried deep under the new Ravenscraig Strip Mill earthworks); originally laid in the earlyish 1900s and far too early to have been laid with 110a. It will remain forever a mystery. The Ravenscraig line itself was ignominiously cut up into 12 foot lengths, broken apart by a JCB (which popped the chairs off the rails as if cracking peas from a pod), dumped into a lorry and carted off along the trackbed to Mossend. I should add that CWR on the line had been recovered years earlier and the down relaid with bullhead panels.

 

[DJ_K666]

I fail to see why this country chose to use the dreadful bullhead rail at all. No other countries to my knowledge used it (correct me if I'm wrong) The only place abroad where I have seen some was back in the 1950's in northern France on the way from LeHavre to Paris. My guess is that it was put in by U K enginners when trying to get the French railways up and runnning again after ww2. B/H was inherently dodgy -only wooden keys held the rails to gauge and were constantly falling out . Good job labour was cheap then, with the amount of inspection required constantly. It would'nt have been so bad if the keys had been on the inside-at least you're in with a chance that way. I remember going round one of the Latchmere curves on a railtour and was horrified to see that at a guess nearly half the keys on the other track were laying on the deck! London transport used to say that it was easier to renew track with b/h but Metros all over the world inc: Paris and N Y C never dream'pt of using this Heath-Robinson system.

Isn't that the reason the French run their trains on the left? I can imagine a few noses being out of joint over there for that.

 

[Richard Scott]

Isn't that the reason the French run their trains on the left? I can imagine a few noses being out of joint over there for that.

Sure France was always left hand running apart from Alsace as that was part of Germany until end of WW1. When Alsace became part of France it retained right hand running.