[An Idea]Concrete Track vs. Wooden Track

[Thinlizzy]

You can have wooden sleepers on CWR and concrete sleepers on jointed track.
When you get wet beds, the bottom of the concrete sleepers wears away quite quickly and you soon end up having to change the sleepers

[tydev417]

Concrete is good,only if the wheels are perfect round.
After a slippery stop that's over very fast i'm afraid.
Leaves on track you know.

You would be shocked then over here in NY, Metro-North and the LIRR have new M7s that constantly have flat wheels but run on concrete tracks. They sound alright on concrete tracks but they sound horrible on wooden tracks, it sounds like they're constantly banging on something.

I have no clue what kind of concrete track you guys have out there but it's pretty quiet.

Me and my family took a trip to Florida last summer on Amtrak's Silver Meteor train from NY Penn Station to Orlando and the Northeast Corridor section of the route is electrified and has concrete tracks with tilting and all that good stuff but the ride was smooth and very quiet except on bridges but when we got to Washington DC, the train switches to diesel and runs on CSX and Norfolk Southern (both freight companies who could care less about Amtrak and use wooden tracks on all their lines mainly because they don't need concrete) tracks all the way down to Tampa, Fl. The ride past DC is very bumpy and loud because of the wooden tracks. I couldn't wait until we got passed DC on the ride back.

I'm pretty sure that anybody who has rode on the NEC before would agree.

http://transitalk.info/pages/railsounds.html

Go to the LIRR M7, the train has flat wheels running on wooden tracks around Hempstead, Long Island. Then go to the NJ Transit train which is running on the NEC. You could tell the difference concrete and wooden tracks.

Plastik, I think all the US freight companies are getting tracks with plastic ties called TieTek.

http://www.tietek.com/

EDIT:I found a video of the Silver Meteor on the NEC,

http://www.trainweb.org/oaksmodelrr/Video/Index.html
It's sounds horrible doesn't it?

[chevyrider]

The idea that concrete is better comes because it's mostly a newer track.
Tracks with sleepers of wood can last 50 years, if the climate isn't too wet.
Most tracks however are shifted straight and leveled out every few years by machines and even more by hand on small bad spots.
The reason that to noise is different at some tracks, can be because the surface of the rails may have a different angle.
New tracks are slightly lower on the inside than on the outside for every rail.
Worn railheads are almost flat.
So when a train slides on a worn track the flat spot is on the inner side of the wheel.
When that train run over new tracks later on (mostly concrete, then the flat spot doesn't contact the rail because it runs on the outside now.
Thats why trains run smoother on very long curves, which force the wheel drive on the outer edges of it's surface.

[Samo]

when does the m7 ever go on wood? the only thing i've seen on wood around here are the subway cars, they make a horrible racket, but they're old

i've only seen the m7 on the LIRR's concrete tracks and they're still relativley loud. this may be a bit off topic, but the only trains that can be considered "quiet" are the wood track steam engines

[tydev417]

when does the m7 ever go on wood? the only thing i've seen on wood around here are the subway cars, they make a horrible racket, but they're old

i've only seen the m7 on the LIRR's concrete tracks and they're still relativley loud. this may be a bit off topic, but the only trains that can be considered "quiet" are the wood track steam engines

Nah....the Staten Island Railway is quieter. It was once a steam railroad but the city took over and placed R44s on the line back in the 70s. The trains are quiet for the most part, well they're quieter than steam engines.

Not all of the subway trains are old, they started replacing the trains in 2002 with the new R142s, R143s and R160s which are being delivered this year to replace most of the older trains on the BMT and IND. You would probably be shocked to hear that the L line is starting to run by computers then.

LIRR's Port Washington branch, West Hempstead branch, Long Beach branch, Flatbush branch, mostly all lines outside of the mainline have wooden track.

[chevyrider]

The comfort not only depends on a track type.
For the Dutchies around here i can say that the best trains for me where the Mat'54 "Hondekop".
This trains designed in 1954 where very heavy and drove steady like a house.
The worst one was the NL Lok 1100.
Several times i was beaten from my drivers chair after it began to swing left and right.
This because the bogies of this short loks where coupled together.
A swing of the front bogey gave an opposite swing to the rear bogey.