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(19-minutes)

Video starts with a passing freight train. One of the tankers appears to be in a bit of distress (it has been highlighted in the video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVXW_rLC8R8

An entire wreck train is dispatched, and apparently all that was done was to assemble some blocking under the errant truck and pull it back onto the railheads with another diesel. Unfortunately there may be a bit of additional info in the subtitles, but Google can't translate those (not that it does a particularly good job with Russian anyway). The comments, on the other hand reveal plenty of accusations of featherbedding

We do get a good look at a Russian "big hook" though...

(I ran across the above while reading a thread on 4chan's transportation board, in a thread dedicated to a Q&A session about Russian railroads. I'd asked about why so many of their freight railcars were so uniformly short, and the answer was 22-ton axle load limit--which explained why the only longer tankers in the train had eight axles.)

 ---PCJ

Last edited by RailRide
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Thanks for posting.... Working the brakeman's spare board I've  worked at a few wrecks site with CN's  250 ton hook..       Maybe 3 tops.

As for the Russian video.. No   shortage of man power. It must have been stationed  close by . Although a crew might be able to re-rail the car around a yard with a supply of blocks it would be difficult to do  out on the road, best left to the experts. Besides the re-railers that hang on the engine  are really heavy. It takes two   crew members to handle them. 

Now days a road repair truck  (car dept) handle this type of thing if thy can drive to it.

I'm not sure the big hook would have  worked  out underneath the over head wires?

50 employees and a couple of dogs shouting instructions from the sidelines!  Possibly the snappiest looking wreck train I have ever seen + an extremely heavy duty crane, mounted on eight wheel  trucks!

Noted no graffiti on the freight cars - Russia must have a special gulag for taggers! Judging from the concrete ties, heavy rail, neatly ballasted right of way, modern condition of their roller-bearing rolling stock, Russians have a high regard for their railroad.  Impressive. 

 

mark s posted:

Noted no graffiti on the freight cars - Russia must have a special gulag for taggers! Judging from the concrete ties, heavy rail, neatly ballasted right of way, modern condition of their roller-bearing rolling stock, Russians have a high regard for their railroad.  Impressive. 

Mark, they don't get much, if any on the freight cars.

 However, they do suffer extensive graffiti on passenger equipment. Especially on their version of the Metro, that run in tunnels.  There are gangs who hide out at night waiting for the opportunity to attack a train.

Here's but one example I found:

russia

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  • russia

Why the 22 ton axle load?  Light rail, weak bridges..or  ?  Amazing how much information did not formerly come out of Russia...the model car sites in 1/43rd are saturated with models of cars we never heard of, leaving me thinking there were few or none for citizens.  This rerailing does seem to set a new standard for featherbedding that would make U.S. railroad management cringe.

This looks like a heavy travelled main line.... Double track and electrified... Having a derailed car sitting on the main ties up one of the main  tracks.(maybe both if the car is just clear of the other track.   Not good for business.... Yes I know it's possible to re-rail a car with blocks,  re-railers  hydraulic jacks whatever  but you have to get them   to the site first . You can't always drive to the location., also needed is  a engine to move the car over the re-railers.  so that means getting rid of parts of the train, Why? hanging on to 40 or cars trying to make a gentle move is not that easy.  If the car is loaded it also  makes it a little more difficult.   It seems the big hook was handy so they brought it out only to unload the blocks of wood etc....Yep a little over the top,but hey it's their railroad. 

 

 

Makes me wonder what could have been inside that car, especially since the Russian Army was walking around as well. My Russian is pretty rusty, so I couldn't get enough from the written portions of the video to get any further info.

Maybe the cargo was the reason it took so long to get it back on the rails?

colorado hirailer posted:

Why the 22 ton axle load?  Light rail, weak bridges..

That's not unusual in other countries. The railways are built to lighter standards than mainline USA, often with a higher proportion of passenger traffic rather than heavy freight. The Australian standard gauge national network is rated for similar axle loadings (that does not include their isolated heavy-haul iron ore railroads).

Last edited by Ace

Strange thing about the Russian & railroads in other ex-Soviet Union “Commonwealth of Independent States” countries is that while their axle load might be less than those in North America, their loading gauge is wider than the AAR – Plate F, used here in the US.

CIS countries also use the Russian Broad Gauge (5’) as opposed to the Standard track gauge (4’8.5”).

These are just my opinion,

Thanks,

Naveen Rajan

Last edited by naveenrajan

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