Scunthorpe used to supply about 95% of Network Rail's needs. Not sure if it still does though.
It's supposed to go to various recycling centres (Westbury and March are two) to determine what can be reused and where (e.g. OK for sidings only). Unusable stuff is sold on.
Yes, but there are numerous disused sidings and routes which have been singled where old track is still in situ half buried beneath grass and shrubbery. All that should have been lifted decades ago when wages were low.
How do you know wages aren't low now, in comparison to the future? Wages have nothing to do with it. Having a 24 hour railways does.
The 113A is a British Standard 56 kg/m rail, the UIC60 is an EN standard 60 kg/m rail which is the widely used standard for high speed rail (over 200 kph). Both can be rolled at Scunthorpe. How much is produced there and how much imported I don't know at present.
British Steel roll Bullhead for heritage railways in the UK so perhaps for that contract they just were not competitive. The Austrian mill at Donawitz is reputed to be one of the most efficient in the world.
That is simple job for any cast iron foundry, the capability is still there (although very much reduced in capacity from the past), I've no idea if the demand is though.
No, some aren't but there is a scandalous amount of scrap rail (and other stuff) abandoned along the railway.
Absolutely, but it's pretty easy to tell the difference and there is a hell of a lot of unrecovered scrap (again, not just rails). I also don't see how removing it would "draw unwanted attention" to it?
Still bullhead? I recall attending a site meeting because we couldn’t install an electronic treadle for Cleghorn barriers: it was agreed to put a length of flat bottom in. The meeting was in 1990…..
Treadle in question was on the Lanark Branch. In any event, it’s been an MCB of some sort for a while now.
A few months back the bay at Kingston had several lengths of bullhead track replaced. The new lengths of bullhead were lying in the four-foot for a few weeks before the relaying, but I couldn't see the web so I couldn't determine where and when they were rolled. The old lengths were left in the four-foot, I don't if they're still there. What was interesting were the dents in the foot of the rail caused by the rail being pushed down into the chair. The bay doesn't get much use, so I expect that it wasn't considered necessary to relay it when the Kingston loop went over to flat-bottom track many years back. When I last looked a few years back, the curve from Fulwell to Strawberry Hill still had bullhead track; this curve gets only two or three services a day each way and perhaps some ECS workings.
Sharp curves (I don't know if that applies to the Fulwell one) tend to be Bullhead as it's more flexible laterally and bends without going all threepenny bit at the joints. There are some examples at the Mossend junctions near Motherwell which see very heavy day to day use. As I understand it the first 'Double Head Rail' (from which Bullhead is descended) was intended to be turned over after the upper head became worn, but the indentations on the underneath head made this impractical. Interestingly, I had a few very short pieces of 98lb Flat Bottom which I used to use as anvils and the hammer left dents in the head very easily.
Yes. The CWR would first end with breather switches into jointed track. Then junction fishplates are available to join dissimilar track types together. Even brand new and part worn rails of the same type need junction plates to join newly relaid and older existing lengths together.
i thought doing that would put too much stress on the jointed track on wood sleepers. thats why a breather is necessary.
Yes, a technique introduced after my time on the perway.
Wages, at whatever level, have very much to do with the cost effectiveness of lifting redundant track. Decades ago, before our economy was de-industrialised, there was a strong market for scrap metal. With wages being low, there was a chance then of recouping enough from sales of scrap metal to finance the cost of lifting the surplus track.
