In the Stand By Me scene, Gordie checks the rail by touching it with his hand, not putting his ear to it.
I think the Indian guide cliché involves putting an ear to the ground, not to a train track. I’ll bet it really doesn’t work on dirt.
Uh, no. That’s how birds are supposed to find worms. That’s not really true though, birds put their ear to the ground to listen for trains.
No experience for shooting, but I did do some research into World War One fighter pilots, and how they had to use incendiary bullets to shoot down hydrogen-filled dirigibles (see Willy Omer François Jean Coppens de Houthulst as the best example).
I also used to, at times, beat my local volunteer firefighters to calls; in three instances they were car fires and I was able to knock them down with my car’s large dry-chem fire extinguisher (which the FD would recharge for me) before they even arrived. At one fire I vividly remember the owner trying to extinguish a really small engine blaze with a garden hose as a little girl, apparently his daughter, screamed, “Get away!! It’s gonna explode!!” After I knocked out the fire with barely a squirt of my extinguisher, I looked at her and said skeptically “Explode?” She replied, “Don’t you watch ‘CHiPs’?? Don’t you watch ‘Emergency One’??” and came to realize that she herself had been spouting an overwrought Hollywood cliche, judging from her expressions.
Subsequently, I have been at the scenes of many, many highway-side car fires, small and large. Perhaps 50-100 total. Some I managed to knock down with my extinguisher; others got too big for anyone but the fire department. Never have I seen ANY car or truck explode. The most I’ve seen were tires exploding from the heat and burning through, or something in the car like a can of hair spray or “Fix-a-Leak” explode.
+1 for this, as confirmation from this railroad expert.
Toss aside not only the real existence of curve greasers (which exist on freight railroads on many sharper-than-average curves as well); there’s also the issue of wear on the track leading to a fine layer of steel dust on the rail surface, as well as iron oxide (rust) from the interaction between exposed steel and air/rain/humidity. That will pile up on the part of the railhead not necessarily contacted fully by the wheel and flange surface. Add to that simple dust from anywhere, maybe from the cargo of the train in question (coal dust, powdered limestone, flour/grain, processed iron ore, whatever) that may be blowing around the right of way, and also the occasional drip of stray lubricating oil, grease, diesel fuel, or whatnot from the locomotives. All atop a “polished” metal surface.
The result is that the top of the rail does get both dirty and smoothly clean, so much so that one of the most basic rules of railroad safety is NEVER to step directly on the top of the rail. Even with safety or work shoes, it’s like stepping on a slick surface, and one can easily slip off and fall, possibly cracking the noggin open on the rail upon which one has just slipped. It’s the easiest way to tell a real railroader from a “civilian” around railroad tracks: a railroader will never step on the rail when crossing over tracks, while a non-railroader almost always will.
In addition to rail lubricators (if you’re looking for them, older ones generally look like a little black pot on the ground next to the track, with thick black hoses extending to the rails and a LOT of grease in the 10 yards on either side of the contraption. New ones are gray steel boxes with solar panels) most modern locomotives are built with flange lubrication systems to help prevent premature wear on the wheelsets.
If things are going right, that lubricant doesn’t drip down to the railhead, but as we all know…things don’t always go right.
Having spent 6 years as a railroader on jointed, narrow gauge rail, I could in fact put my ear to the rail and hear/feel our little 4-4-0 chomping up the hill about a quarter of a mile away. On the big iron, my experience has been that the rails ‘singing’ is about the earliest indication you get that a train’s coming, and with 79MPH speeds, you don’t want to be there, anyway.
Now that you’re edumacated about greased tracks consider the idea that if the tracks are perfectly straight you would see trains at very long distances. If you don’t have a line of sight of a train then you’re near a greasing mechanism. Thus my comment. If you’re hearing a train before you see it then you’re not in the line of sight of a train.
I discovered this as a child when I put pennies down on the track. It had a thin film of grease on it.
You MIGHT hear the train.
You MIGHT.
and you MIGHT NOT hear the train that kills you.
Now don’t get run over by a train if you did’t hear it.
Not being educated at all on the workings on railroads or trains, but having limited experience playing on tracks as a kid, I’ve never noticed great stretches of tracks to be greasy either (although, point taken on flange greasing).
I’m simply wondering if the wheels of the train are are greased directly, rather than the track, hence greasy, flattened pennies and perhaps a light film on tracks after a train goes by? Besides, I’d imagine locomotives wouldn’t want too much grease as it would kill traction.
I hear the train a comin’ It’s rolling round the bend And I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when …
I’m at a train track right now. I’ve been listening for over a half an hour and I haven’t heard anyt
Yes, trains can be heard approaching quite a distance away before they were visible by putting an ear on the rail. At least in the 1940’s/'50’s they could. We lived about 1/2 mile from the rail line heading SW toward the Los Angeles area, having come over the Cajon Pass that separated most of Southern California from the Mojave Desert.
As a kid, I loved the old steam engines, and we used to hop them as they slowed down coming through the train station in what was known as Alta Loma (part of Rancho Cucamonga now)…magnificent beasts bellowing smoke and steam, and blowing that whistle.
well no, that was my point. If you can’t see a train because of straight runs of track then you’re near a curve which would have the grease on it.
As the train passes the wheels are greased. the weight of the train pumps the mechanism or at least that’s how it appears to function to me. If I remember correctly it’s to grease the inner lip of the wheel which is what would make contact with the rail as it goes around curve. If you ever noticed a great deal of screeching on a straight track in one general location it’s because the rail is slightly wavy and tags more wheels as they pass over.
I’m no train expert but I am one of those nerds who likes to watch them go by.
There’s a longish stretch of straight track where I’ve killed a bit of time, as a kid and even as an adult. It’s rural, and there’s usually no grease on the rails, but sometimes there’s a hint of something slick. We’d have contests seeing who could walk the farthest on the rails, and by the time we were teens, most of us could walk a rail pretty far – especially if jumping across was allowed in the case of losing balance.
Seems to me that we could always see it before hearing it, but we could hear it through the rails well before hearing it through the rails. At 55 with bad knees I’m not going to do any further study of the issue, nor can I get too far on a rail.
But we still take the little ones out to squish a penny now and then.
The rural crossing is on a bit of a rise, and it’s on a gravel car track in the woods. The woods aren’t usually cleared back as far as they should, but even when they are, people seem to be in the silly habit of driving up and stopping on the tracks to check for a train. One winter day a man who drove there frequently was headed back to the highway with his parents in the car behind. He did the usual stupid thing, saw a train right there, and stepped on it. His father followed. His father was killed instantly and his mother was seriously wounded but lived.
Everyone knows it’s stupid to stop ON the tracks and look, yet most people do it, in these wooded rural trails. Go figure.
Nooooooo! DAMN YOU, NINJA TRAIN!!!
Well, I guess we won’t be hearing from Ludo again. Too bad he missed my cautionary tale.
Interesting.
Anyone know if this effect would be any different with a bullet train? ie Would it be louder, quieter, or of a different pitch?
Oh, you never hear the bullet with your name on it.
Is it true that if you place a penny of a RR track, it will cause the train to derail?
Yes, if you park a 4 ton truck on the tracks while you do it. Otherwise it will just flatten the penny.
Decades ago when BART was being built near Hayward I went down one day to watch them laying the rails. The rails were the continuous type, about a quarter mile long and I was about a third of the way from the end they were working on. Every few seconds an air wrench would be used to drive and tighten the bolts holding the rails onto the ties. I’d hear the zing of the vibrations in the rail (complete with Doppler effect) passing by a moment before the rat-a-tat of the wrench reached me through the air. What was really cool, was that the rail sound would reflect off of the free end and zing by the other way, then back a third time, and often a fourth before it died out.
Didn’t hear any trains, though.