Any grade above about 10% needs the extra traction since the friction between the wheels and rails won’t be enough to push the train forward or keep it from falling backwards. We’ve added another video of exploring this area below the break to show the cart being used, too, but if you’d like a more multipurpose vehicle to use on abandoned rail near you, take a look at this bicycle which is converted to operate on the railroad.Ĭontinue reading “Cart Cruises Abandoned California Rail” → Posted in Transportation Hacks Tagged blm, cart, custom, exploration, mold, motor, polyurethane, rail, railroad, wheelsĬog railways are a somewhat unusual way of train locomotion, typically only installed when a train needs to climb steep terrain. In this cart, you can explore long distances using an extremely low-cost method of transportation. He found that steel or cast wheels were not particularly comfortable on long journeys so after a few attempts he has come up with a home-built polyurethane wheel which is cast in a mold around a steel go-cart wheel and then trimmed on a lathe.įor pure exploration, there’s almost no better place to go than the American west thanks to all the public BLM land available. There are no brakes other than the riders’ shoes, and while this all seems straightforward enough the real hack here is ’s custom wheels. It uses slightly longer go-kart axles to accommodate the width of the railroad, and a small six horsepower gas engine with a single gear to power the rear axle. Some extra support is added for the motor mount and for the seating location. The frame of this cart is simple enough, it’s little more than 2×3 framing with a plywood deck. There’s not much in the way of infrastructure out there, but does have a unique way of traveling through it using abandoned railroad lines and this custom rail cart. Rural California has huge tracts of land run by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which is publicly accessible to anyone willing to venture into the deserts. Southern California is known for its nearly perfect year-round climate, excellent surf, and extremely high cost of living, but once you get away from the coast things are radically different. Let’s take a look at some of the interesting engineering behind these wayside defect detectors.Ĭontinue reading “Feeling The Heat: Railway Defect Detection” → Posted in Engineering, Featured, Interest, Original Art Tagged acoustic, axle, bearing, defect detection, ir, journal, Microbolometer, rail, railroad, railway, sensor, train, wheel Given the forces involved, keeping trains on the straight and narrow is no mean feat, and railway designers have come up with a web of sensors and systems to help them with the task of keeping an eye on what’s going on with the rolling stock of a train. This became painfully evident with the recent Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which resulted in a hazardous materials incident the likes of which no community is ready to deal with. The forces that a fully loaded train can exert on not only the tracks but on itself are hard to get your head around, and the potential for disaster is often only a failed component away. A couple of strips of steel, some wooden ties and gravel ballast to keep everything in place, some rolling stock with flanged wheels on fixed axles, and you’ve got the basics that have been moving freight and passengers since at least the 18th century.īut that basic simplicity belies the true complexity of a railway, where even just keep keeping the trains on the track can be a daunting task. On the technology spectrum, railroads would certainly seem to skew toward the brutally simplistic side of things.
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