January is in with a roar!

January is traditionally the slowest month of the year for the Northwest Railway Museum.  It is a time to reflect on the prior year, plan for the coming year, and to conduct annual inventories.  This month, however, has not been typical.

In addition to being one of the warmest Januaries on record, there have been some powerful wind storms.  Trees have been blown down, power out, and traffic detoured.  Wind storms have also destroyed a total of three railroad crossing gates on the Museum's railroad in North Bend.  

Crossing gates are designed to withstand wind gusts of more than 70 miles per hour, but despite official records indicating gusts of "just" 50 mph, three gates - made of extruded aluminum - folded up over the wind guards.  Of course, despite the unexpected expense and effort, they will be repaired in time for the coming season, which begins at 11 AM on Saturday, April 6, 2019.  

Crossing art?

Crossing repairs are far from a work of art, or are they?  Recent crossing repairs on King Street in Snoqualmie and North Bend Way in King County appeared to have more in common with crazy quilting than a roadway.  Yet art is in the eyes of the beholder, so you decide.

Notwithstanding, broken asphalt occurs in a somewhat haphazard and random fashion, which is exacerbated by local wintertime snow removal.  And every five or so years the cumulative effect causes enough damage to make some crossings  rough for cars and light trucks.  So the Museum hired Asphalt by George to remove the failed sections and replace with new hot mix.

First, the roadway was closed off.  The defective sections were cut out with a concrete saw.  Then a worker pried out the old material. A truck brought in a load of hot mix, and a compactor tamped it into the patchwork. Finally, some cracks and the seams where sealed with hot tar.  (Thanks to the City of Snoqualmie Public Works Department for closing King Street to allow this work to occur safely!)

North Bend Way is a wider and faster crossing than King Street.  Prevailing speeds can reach 70 MPH over this 160-foot long crossing, and it is a critical corridor so it is difficult to close the road.  The patchwork effort there required a little more choreography to assure worker safety, but the theory was the same.

Completion of this crossing work represents two more summer projects the Museum can check off the list, and another task completed in time for Day Out With Thomas 2018. 

Crossing Northern

The Northwest Railway Museum's railroad has many safety obligations, and chief among them are 13 public crossings.  Northern Street is in downtown Snoqualmie and serves a residential neighborhood, and while it receives only light traffic, many decades of use and several major flood events that submerged the track have taken their toll.  In June 2018 a project with the City of Snoqualmie began improving the crossing.

Volunteers and staff from the Museum along with a crew from Monroe Correctional removed the timber crossing planks, removed mud that had collected in the tie cribs, and set about improving the structure.

The tie cribs were refilled with clean ballast, and down ties were tamped up.  New crossing planks from Wheeler Lumber in South Dakota were then installed between the rails.  The new planks were cut from coastal Douglas fir and treated with copper naphthenate.   They were fastened in place with timber screws and by the end of the day the crossing was open to traffic.

Crossing gate retired

One of the aspects of railroads that Spike finds particularly interesting is the longevity of many fixed assets.  Bridges, depots, and even rails are frequently in service for many decades, and in some instances for more than 100 years.  Electrical apparatus, however, are not things you often see with long service lives, but there are exceptions. 

The Museum recently retired a railroad crossing gate mechanism that was placed in service in 1953, reportedly on either the Great Northern or Northern Pacific Railway here in Washington State. It was received in a donation from the Burlington Northern in 1977 and installed on Meadowbrook Way SE in Snoqualmie.

The Griswold-built device was manufactured in Minneapolis by the precursor to today's Siemens Rail Automation.  This device is known in the industry simply as a model EM gate, and was replaced with a much newer device of the same design that was rebuilt by the Museum's signal maintainer Jon B.  Rebuilding included new wire, a new relay, repainting, new lights, new cross bucks and more.  Total financial investment was modest but an estimated 175 person hours were invested in the project.

The original device served the Museum well but the mechanism was badly worn; replacement was the only practicable option.  The newly rebuilt device will easily serve for twenty or more years thanks to the efforts of Jon and others at the Museum.

Come and see it in operation for yourself - trains operate weekends through the end of October.  Check out schedules and fares on the Museum's web site at www.trainmuseum.org

A signal indication

Winter weather often brings challenging driving conditions, and with that comes the inevitable opportunity for mishap. And so was the outcome of a recent winter driving incident at the Snoqualmie Parkway railway crossing.  The incident did not involve a train or engine, and there were no serious injuries.  However, the multiple vehicle accident resulted in the loss of a mast and signals in the center median when a deflected vehicle struck the mast, broke it off at the base, and the resulting impact with the local terrain damaged nearly every component.  Fortunately, no one was seriously injured, and the vehicle owner was appropriately insured.

The Northwest Railway Museum is responsible for five railroad crossing signal systems. With limited project work and just occasional component failures, the Museum only rarely purchases replacement parts.  So it came as quite a surprise to learn how much consolidation and change in the railroad signal industry has taken place in the last few years: now many signal components are supplied by Siemens Rail Automation, and nearly everything is made to order. So instead of purchasing parts "off the self," a new assembly was ordered.  About six weeks later, it arrived on a truck ready for installation.

The installation was completed in a few hours and the system was tested.  Costs totaled more than $6,000 and were fully reimbursed by the vehicle's insurance carrier.  Now the Snoqualmie Parkway signals are back in service and ready for the upcoming operating season!

Main Street crossing reconstruction

"We've been working on the railroad" and there is another new highway crossing to show for! 

Railroad crossings represent one of the bigger funding challenges for the Northwest Railway Museum.  With a total of 18 roadway crossings, the Museum devotes significant resources towards maintenance and reconstruction.  This latest project cost was in excess of $51,000 and replaced a double track crossing in downtown North Bend, which was required to continued operating trains into the North Bend Depot.



Concrete panels arrive and await

installation on Main Street as an

excavator sets the grade.

Main Street was last reconstructed in 1988.  Normally, a new double track crossing of that size would have cost over $100,000 and there was no funding to perform work on that scale.  Fortunately, the Museum was able to leverage several opportunities to make the project viable.

The Museum learned about a small track removal project in the City of Redmond, about 20 miles from the Museum.  There, two concrete tub crossings that were installed in 1997 were being removed to allow installation of a new sewer.  Often, used tub crossings are scrapped because they are difficult to remove without damage.  So with little commercial value, the City of Redmond was able to donate the panels to the Museum.  In the end, of the 70 panels removed, 40 were reclaimed, repaired and reused.  This “saved” the Museum over $35,000 versus the cost of new crossing tubs.

The new crossing takes shape on Main

Street in North Bend.  Concrete tubs

eliminate the use of railroad ties in the

crossing.

 

The Museum was able to secure a grant from the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (“WUTC”).  The WUTC is one of the agencies that provide regulatory oversight of the Museum’s railway.   They maintain a Grade Crossing Protective Fund, which awarded a $20,000 grant towards the cost of new welded rail and its installation. 

Other important project support came from the City of North Bend, which provided all the traffic control required to close the road and detour traffic, and forgave three years of user fees for the North Bend Depot for a combined benefit of over $11,000.

The crossing has been completed; it opened as soon as the

asphalt cooled.

And the Museum was able to secure some relay rail for the side track (new rail was used on the main).  As well, the Museum's dedicated volunteers were able to perform the required repairs on the used crossing panels.

The project allowed for six days of construction but it was completed in less than five.  RailWorks Track Systems, Asphalt by George, and Snoqualmie's Imhoff Contractor Crane Service performed the balance of the work. 

Crossing repairs

Center of crossing is re-

paired on North Bend Way.

It may be Halloween but things will no longer go bump in the night when using several newly-repaired crossings. 

The Northwest Railway Museum has 13 public crossings at grade or, more simply stated, 13 public roads that cross the tracks.  The Museum has certain statutory responsibilities to maintain portions of these crossings even though it is cars and trucks and not trains that wear them out.  Other portions of the crossing are generally the responsibility of the road authority.

Asphalt By George's crew compacts

new asphalt on Stone Quarry Road.

 Projects usually turn out better when groups and individuals work together, and road and railway projects often work the same way.   So the City of Snoqualmie and the Northwest Railway Museum hired Snoqualmie’s own Asphalt By George to perform repairs on Northern Street, Stone Quarry Road and North Bend Way and then split up the costs according to areas of responsibility.  These crossings were damaged by heavy use, snow plows, and just plain old age.  

George's crew poses at Northern Street

along with locomotive 4024.

Deteriorated wooden planks and broken asphalt were removed and replaced with new asphalt.  A spacer was used to ensure the slots to accommodate the car and locomotive wheels were inserted.  And old asphalt was shipped to the asphalt plant to be recycled into new asphalt.  Kudos to the great workers at Asphalt By George, and to the City of Snoqualmie Public Works Department for working with the Museum!

Reconstructing a railroad crossing

Crossings are the interface between a railroad and a roadway or trail. The Northwest Railway Museum has 23 crossings; 13 of those are public crossings of local streets, arterials, or major thoroughfares including a State highway. All of these crossings require ongoing maintenance; the majority of the wear and tear is caused by truck and automobile traffic. To meet the needs of today's heavier trucks and increased traffic, when it is opportune crossings are being rebuilt to withstand greater weight and use.

Among the busiest of the public crossings in Snoqualmie is Meadowbrook Way SE, a road that opened in the 1920s. It was last reconstructed after the great flood of 1996 using asphalt. The roadway was heavily impacted by flooding in 2007 and again in 2009, and is scheduled for repaving (overlay) in late summer 2011. The Museum has been working with the City of Snoqualmie for more than four years to secure funding that would allow reconstruction of the crossing along with the overlay. Fortunately, a portion of funding from the Snoqualmie Tribe’s Snoqualmie Casino designated for area road improvements has allowed the project to proceed.

The Museum has rebuilt nearly 1/2 of its public crossings in the last 15 years. All of the recent projects have been reconstructed using concrete panels similar to those used on railroads throughout the Northwest. These panels last longer and take the weight of today's trucks better than older-style asphalt or timber crossings. But the concrete panels are only the most obvious element of a crossing reconstruction. Reconstructions also often involve upgrading the size of the rail and improving the subgrade conditions by excavating out the native soil to a depth of 41 inches and replacing it with railroad ballast. (This makes the crossing more resistant to settlement caused by the passage of trucks and busses.) It also involves the use of longer railroad crossties to improve stability and to support concrete panels. All these improvements together allow reconstructed crossings to last at least 25 years.

RailWorks of Chehalis, WA was awarded a contract and began work on July 5. The existing crossing was removed and the subgrade was excavated to a depth of 41 inches. Larger replacement rail (115 RE, which means it is 115 pounds per yard, as opposed to the existing 90 RB rail, which is 90 pounds to the yard) was welded together using the thermite process to eliminate rail joints from the crossing. Geofabric was placed as a new base at the bottom of the excavation. New railroad ballast was placed as subgrade and new oak crossties were placed on 18 inch centers. The welded rail was double spiked in the crossing and rail anchors to resist creep were installed. Concrete panels manufactured by Omega Industries of Vancouver, WA were installed on the new ties, and Asphalt by George patched the space between the new panels and the existing roadway. The City of Snoqualmie provided additional project support by assuming responsibility for the temporary closure of Meadowbrook Way SE. Project value was $38,000 and work was completed in 3 days.

Photos/Video:

(video) Scenes from the Meadowbrook Way SE crossing reconstruction project

(top photo) Completed crossing on July 8, 2011

(upper middle photo) New concrete crossing panel is lowered into place. Large lag screws driven into the white oak cross ties will hold them in place.

(lower middle photo) A jig is used to align two lengths of rail prior to thermite welding.

(bottom photo) Special compromise joint bars transition between the new welded rail and the existing rail. (Note the different height.)