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Re: (erielack) CWR - made in Salamanca



That describes the electric flash butt welding process.  The equipment was owned by welding contractors (NCG, Chemetron and several other companies) and was semi-portable on railroad cars.

The rails were pressed together with a hydraulic press.  One wire was clamped to the base of each rail, the press pushed the rails into contact, and a heavy electric current passed through the joint.  The highest resistance was found at the faces of the two rails, and it was heated to a white-hot fusing temperature there.  When it was hot enough, the rails were separated, then shoved hard together so that the hot metal in the rail ends was fused and upset, forming a bulge all around.  The rail was then advanced one rail length and the process repeated.

When the new weld moved out of the welder, the next station sheared off the excess upset metal around the weld while it was still hot.  Then at another station the rail head was ground to a smooth contour (we hoped), inspected, and eventually pushed along onto the waiting rail train.

Until about 1968, some welding plants used gas to heat the rail ends before they were joined, but I don't know if the EL had any gas welds.  The D&H had some gas welds made in the 1930's, and they caused some problems.

The only reason for adopting 1/4 mile as a fairly standard length for CWR strings was economic.  It was a convenient length to lay one string in about two or three hours between trains, depending on the size and configuration of the rail gang.  It was also just about the longest length of a rail train that could be handled by one locomotive for movement and unloading on most railroads.

A rail train was no better than its worst car, and the more cars you had in the train, the more chance you had for problems.  The old D&H rail train had solid bearings, and it tended to sit still all winter.  That caused rust on the journals which led to hot boxes.  Changing a wheel set under a loaded rail train is not an excercise for the faint-of-heart, so we D&H'ers were happy to start using the EL rail train with roller bearing cars.  The cars were dedicated to the rail trains year round.

Gordon Davids

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