- 01 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Locomotive leaf springs brightly rusted
Still life is a fine art genre where images are made from objects are arranged and lit as subject. Here, I’ve framed compositions from found accumulations of railway objects around workshops, engine sheds, track storage and the lineside. Rails, timber and steel sleepers, chairs, fixings, locomotive springs, points operating rods, welding gear, speed restriction signs and semaphore signal blades all feature. Other Galleries show trains on the Tanfield Railway, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, the Durango & Silverton Railroad, the Chicago L and some around Seattle.
- 02 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Locomotive brake blocks
Rather like bike brake blocks these are similarly applied to locomotive driving wheels to control speed. Grounded outside a running shed, these new if rusted examples have a chalked destination locomotive type marked on one of them. I have always enjoyed train travel and its design associations with locomotives, rolling stock, engineering and architecture. Steam locomotion developed through engineering brilliance ,the best contemporary craftsmanship and, particularly in Britain, an often high aesthetic.
- 03 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Rolling stock leaf springs
Old rolling stock leaf springs piled outside the workshops await reuse sale or scrapping. Preserved railways are adept at recycling, restoration and creation from scratch, often through the skills, ingenuity and energy of volunteers. Preserved railway locomotives and vehicles are immaculately turned out in contrast to their sometime shabby state as the steam age in Britain drew to a close in the 1960s.
- 04 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Rolling stock buffers
May sunshine touches trailing goose grass stems, yellow dandelions and other plants growing amongst these vehicle buffers that cushion contacts between vehicles in a train. Unlike the springs in Image 03 these look in good order, perhaps to be returned to use in restorations undertaken in the nearby carriage and wagon workshops.
- 05 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Workshop welding gear 1
This group of welding equipment was set by the locomotive shed doors and similar is often visible against varying backgrounds on every visit I make. I liked this accidental composition, one that could change at any time as the gear was moved for use elsewhere. Soft September sunshine created a contrast with the dark interior. Almost all the engines were out on the line and it was very quiet. It’s a great place to be at both ends of the day when much is happening.
- 06 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Workshop welding gear 2
Nearby, a temporary tarpaulin shelter protected welding equipment in use outside. Storage sidings close to the workshops stable locomotives waiting long term for a full overhaul or just simpler remedial work.
- 07 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Barrows and rail sleepers beside a platelayers’ hut
Looking elsewhere down the line a group of platelayers had just finished work on track in a siding. In earlier days small cabins were built at intervals along a route. They would provide shelter and warmth in bad weather, a place to store tools and somewhere to take a break. Their work title comes from the construction of plateways using L section iron before the invention of edge rails and flanged wheels.
- 08 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Track Ties
Ties in the USA, sleepers in the UK, this array was being set out on prepared ground under a Seattle road bridge to await the addition of stone ballast and rails. I liked the repetition of similar forms, the dark colours of the treated timber and the chance of a unique composition. The metal tie plates fitted to each timber tie carry the inverted T-section (flat bottomed) rails held in place by a steel clip similar to those in Image 16.
- 09 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Stacks of recycled track brought in from elsewhere
The Tanfield Railway in northeast England dates from 1725 and said to be the world’s oldest system in continuous use. The County Durham deep mines have gone and with them the extensive network of waggonways and railways that carried the coal to shipping staithes on the Rivers Tyne and Wear. Recycling unwanted track from the national system and commercial lines helped restore and operate preserved railways. This stack of sleepers and rails had been brought in by road and was soon moved to replace deteriorated track or create new lines.
- 10 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Detail of rail, chair, clip, timber sleeper and stone ballast
The stacked track in Image 09 carried with it remnants of the stone ballast from which it had been removed. It’s surprising that any stones remained in place after it was cut, lifted, delivered by truck and stacked: I didn’t move or add any pieces. The image shows one of the numerous past methods of holding the steel running rails into chairs fixed by bolt into the supporting timber sleepers. Contemporary sleepers are in steel reinforced concrete or, less commonly, steel (Image 12).
- 11 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Bolt holes in ends of of steel rail
Lengths of steel rail were laid on the ground alongside the track stack in Images 09 and 10. The holes admit bolts through the rail and pairs of fishplates used to clamp the rails ends together. In the UK, the cross section of these “bull headed” rails evolved from the earliest short lengths of early nineteenth century cast iron prototypes. They were supported in cast chairs and wedged into place using the hardwood and later steel keys in Images 14 & 15. The heavier flange offers the running surface.
- 12 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Detail from the end of a stack of steel sleepers
In the UK the earliest waggonways used timber for track as well as trucks. Later developments included stone blocks to anchor iron rails into the roadbed. Wooden sleepers became almost universal, with steel reinforced concrete a twentieth century development. Steel sleepers like these have been used for some fifty years and plastic forms have been pioneered on Japanese high speed railways. This stack fragment offered scope for pictorial abstraction.
- 13 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Track switch rods
These rods are used in the mechanical system linking moving track points to their operating levers located alongside or remotely in signal boxes. Apart from the safe passage of trains the quality of track is literally the foundation to passenger comfort. The early railways involved heavy physical effort for the platelayers but the continuous development of track, related equipment and complex heavy machinery has improved their lot.
- 14 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Hardwood keys wedged rails into their chairs
For over one hundred years the ‘bullhead’ rail cross section was the most common in the UK. Still easily seen in secondary use such as sidings or preserved railways it was superseded by flat bottomed rail with an inverted T cross-section. Originally, shaped hardwood blocks (keys) were hammered between the rail and each supporting chair screwed to a timber sleeper. A platelayer would walk the track using a long handled heavy hammer to hit loose keys back tightly between rail and chair.
- 15 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Spring steel rail keys for bullhead rails
These spring steel keys served the same purpose as the earlier hardwood keys. Contemporary track fittings seem minimalist set against earlier systems.
- 16 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Steel rail clips for flat bottomed rails
Photographs of the driving of the last spike into a timber tie at Promontory on the first transcontinental line in the USA clearly shows how flat bottomed rails could simply be fixed to a timber tie using what is effectively a large square section nail with an offset head. The system is much simpler and more economical than bullhead rail, chairs and keys. On both sides of the rail one end of a clip is hammered into its plate housing (see Image 08) with the other bearing down on the rail base.
- 17 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Lineside speed restriction signs
Still in trackside use today to indicate speed limits, these long redundant examples might await restoration to use on this or other preserved lines. The Tanfield Railway 1 gallery has another rusted number image.
- 18 RAILWAY ENGINEERING | Semaphore signal blades
In 1825 the world’s first passenger railroad operated between Stockton and Darlington in the UK. The earliest train direction was by hand signals with flags and lights from beside the track. Soon, mechanical signalling evolved and the semaphore system appeared around 1840. Eventually standardised to these two shapes and colours facing the driver, their backs are white with black markings. Red and green glass “spectacles” and a light source enabled night use.