Machines I Used to Operate and Maintain at the Whitewater Valley Railroad

I guess this is the right place for this stuff, because the Whitewater Valley Railroad is an operating railroad museum in Connersville, IN and most of our equipment is someone else's junk sold for scrap value or donated to us.

Hopefully, I'll be able to post these photos and explain what each piece does.

This is an RTW tie crane used to move railroad ties around and it will handle about a 1000 lbs at full extension of the boom. I used to own this machine and donated it after I had to quit working at the museum.


This Case 580 CK belonged to a friend of mine who went into the railroad contracting business around 2001. He died in 2003 and the WVRR bought this machine and another from his estate.



This is an old Kershaw ballast regulator used to shape the rock ballast that railroad track is embedded in. The winch that lifts the front blade is hydraulic and the propulsion system is an International truck engine and 4 speed transmission with a shuttle shift. Interestingly enough, the transmission's reverse gear is not blocked, which can make for some real confusion with our volunteer employees.



This 25000 lb capacity Clark Forklift rides on solid rubber tires and comes in real handy when we work on other equipment. It was donated by the local lumberyard's owner.



This funky looking machine is a Kershaw tie bed scarifier used to dig out the old tie bed to accept the new tie. It's all hydraulic and powered by a 2-53 Detroit. In addition to digging out the tie bed, it's also equipped with a handle and winch to insert the new tie which is much easier than pulling them in manually with tie tongs.
:usa

Had to do 2 posts for this because my wife came home with dinner. It occurs to me now that I should make it clear that the Whitewater Valley Railroad is a museum staffed almost entirely by volunteer employees, except for the office manager/station agent/ dispatcher. I worked there, mainly on weekends from 1984 until 2006 when I was forced to retire due to a second bout of brain cancer.

I mainly worked on the railroad track because when I first joined the museum our track was in horrible shape and after helping to rerail the train I made my first student brakeman trip on, decided to help out in the track department. Over the years I went back and forth between the mechanical department and the track department, after being elected Chief Mechanical Officer around 1994. (They already had someone in charge of the track department, but needed someone to head up Mechanical):beatsme I had a well rounded exposure to running a railroad in the years I worked there, because I also decided since I'd run the two maintenance departments, I should go on take on Operations and became Superintendent in 2003.

The building you can see in the photographs is their new shop building which was built last year, long after I stopped actively participating. Gee, thanks guys.

Anyway back to my lovely little beasties that made track work much easier when we got them, in 1987. Before that we did it the old fashioned way.



This is another tie crane, the same model as the one I used to own, except that it has a stiff boom. The machine in front of it on the other track is a Kershaw tie shear, used to quickly remove old ties by dropping hydraulic shears down just inside the rail and shearing the 7x8 wooden crosstie into 3 peices. Not only will it shear ties but it will at the same time cut 1.5 in diameter steel gauge rods if the operator doesn't notice the rod in time. The control system on that machine was the bane of my existence for awhile because it is an air over hydraulic system and the spaghetti lines were all dry rotted.


This is a Plasser tie tamper used to push the ballast under the ties and compact it. The little fingers, called tampers or shovels vibrate via hydraulic motors and can be squeezed around the bottom of the tie in order to raise the tie tight against the rail. Directly in front of it is a ballast broom attached to the back of the ballast regulator, which is powered by a 4 cylinder Waukesha. The bristles of this broom are old traction motor cables from diesel electic locomotives, that are about three feet long and about the same size as welding cables. The broom is used to sweep loose ballast off the cross ties and into the adjacent cribs.



This is an RCC Tiemaster which is the newest piece of track equipment the WVRR owns. It's a very nifty little tie remover/inserter powered by a 20 HP Briggs & Stratton. It only weighs 5000 lbs and was designed to be towed behind a pickup truck between jobs. Don't let its small size fool you; it can pickup and carry a 16 foot long switch tie and install it in the track, although that takes 4 strokes of the clamp. It was the other machine that belonged to my late friend. There is another view of it below.



Well that's my lineup of old iron. If you want to know more about the Whitewater Valley Railroad go here:

http://www.whitewatervalleyrr.org/

Thanks for looking. :usa

Neat stuff, thanks
Mitch

The pictures are blurred. But I think they're good. All I can say is nice machines! Thanks for sharing!

very interesting indeed.Any plant that makes life easier for the guys at the pointed end is always welcome

those are great pictures I have 4 years on the railway myself. these are just 2 of the machines I have operated one is a nordco srp2 spike puller and the other is an old jackson 6700 surfacing tamper. I have operated almost everthing else on track for maintance of way equipment. tie gang, rail gang and surfacing crew.

Those old Jackson's are good machines and the local area crews around here have one available to them. A lot of contractors use them as well, but they are a little beyond the reach of our volunteer employees and maintainers. For a little while we had an old Nordstrom (nordco) Hyrdo Spiker available to us, but we usually had day for a day maintenance issues and the owner got tired of us breaking it so much and took it away. Every time the guy running the track department when I ran the mechanical department brought up the idea of our purchasing a used one, I'd shoot him down because in addition to all of that track equipment, I was responsible for keeping our locomotives running and in compliance with regulations.

I've been away from it all for nearly six years and when I look back on those times it just seems unbelievable to me that a bunch of amateurs could and continue to operate a 17 mile long passenger carrying railroad mainly on weekends from May through October. A lot of our volunteers started working with us when they were kids and went on to get jobs on the professional railroads.