The worst track in the world

[Densha]

[katoftw]

Wow.  If the youtube title didn't say it was in Germany.  Then I would've assumed Cuba or India.

 

The track look to be homemade/temporary?  The ground has recently been cleared.  And ties just placed on the soil.

Edited August 8, 2014 by katoftw

[cteno4]

There is another thread somewhere here on this track with more info.

 

Jeff

[JR 500系]

I'm surprised the train went through that! It looked really striking with it's dangerous 'curves'...

[Bernard]

it must take an hour to get through that stretch of track! Why doesn't it derail?

[Densha]

The German subtitles mention something about 'traktionskontrolle' and 'mehrfachsteuerung'. The first means traction-control, but I'm not entirely sure about the second. My guess it means that the wheels steer/adapt to the tracks.

Edited August 9, 2014 by Densha

[kvp]

mehrfachsteuerung = multiple unit control

 

This is called feldbahn or field railway. Normally a narrow gauge track temporarly laid onto the ground. The rails tend to look this way if they are left on the ground for more than a year. Normally they should be relaid/realigned every spring or converted to a normal line with ballast if they are to be kept for a longer time. In this case, the line is going through a swamp, so ballasting would be useless. A common trick that was used for hungarian field railways in swampier places is to lay the sleepers on longitudinal timbers, so first you put two long beams into the ground where the rails will go, nail the sleepers on top and then add the rails. Pretty much like a simple bridge laid onto the ground.

[brill27mcb]

I once visited the top of a coal mining waste "mountain" in upstate Pennsylvania, where there were three abandoned electric locomotives with side-dump sections. They had been used to move earth material and spread it around on this growing man-made "mountain.". What was interesting to me is that they were equipped to clamp onto the rails and push a ram (or rams, I forget) out one side or the other of the locomotive. In this way they could grab the track they were on and push it around sideways to move it to the next dumping area on the top plateau of the "mountain." The locomotives took power from an overhead trolley contact wire, and its support poles were bolted to extended track crossties, so the overhead wire would move with the track. What a set-up!

 

Unfortunately, there was no way to get them down from the top of the mountain they had created over many years of service.

 

Rich K.

[westfalen]

Now that is rough track, I like how the driver gets out to see if his train is still all on the track.  I'm wondering how much the roughness is exaggerated by the telephoto lens though.