What’s that purpose of the triangle like thing that’s sometimes seen in-between the rails?
It looks something like this-
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You sometimes see these on tracks that are in tunnels or on turns, but why? It’s not as if you need to keep the wheels of the locomotive snug against the rails, do you?
If on a turn, that is exactly what it is for. The tracks are further apart on the turns and it keeps the wheels from falling in between track. No cite on this one, I just asked the guy in the cube next to me who graduated in Russia from as a railway engineer.
He doesn’t know what they are for in the tunnels.
These guardrails help the railroad trucks (or wheel/axle structures) from wildly jumping the track if they derail - most common on bridges, in tunnels, on tight curves, or other situtation where the railcar could cause much damage (or be seriously damaged itself) if it really went off the track. The guard rail helps keep the trucks sort of on the track.
Kind of an extra cost to install and maintain, so that’s why it’s not universally found on every metre of track.
Well that’s what I originally thought- that they’re for alignment type issues- but wouldn’t the gap between the ‘v’ and the outside tracks have to be pretty narrow for it to work? From what I’ve seen, the gap between the two could easy fit the size of the railcar’s wheel, right?
Railcar wheels are wider than you think.