While it's not the conventional way of doing things, as a rail enthusiast I can't help but enjoy seeing these the cheaper easier solutions you come up with. These are the kinds of things that you might have found in old time light industrial railways, like your single rail points, the removable crossover, and the construction as a whole, all built for cost and practicality, it's lovely to see. Same for all your projects. While I subscribed for the field railway, the simple farm problem solving is so interesting to watch! I find myself excited to see whatever project your working on.
As always, a very pragmatic and simple solution to a complex problem, Tim. Can I suggest that you hinge the 'bridge', so it's always in place, and can be easily lifted out of the way, but doesn't get lost in the inevitable undergrowth. Looking forward to seeing the cut excavations through the bank, how you're going to contain the errant sheep and where the terminus will be. Well done & thanks for sharing!
@@pieter5132: it could hinge all the way over: 180°, so it's completely out of the way? But indeed, I was also thinking: a hinge will make this look like a real piece of art. And as Tony mentioned: it won't get lost that way! (although the support with the curve might prove more challenging than it's worth; keeping it as a loose insert is also a realy pragmatic solution!)
I have seen a similar solution, where each single track was hinged, one on each side of the "bridge" so as to put the individual tracks parallel to the lower rail when not in use.
@@wieb83zd it would require slits in the rails to allow for overlap-folding and wheels still being able to roll. If anything, I'd suggest a turntable rather than lifting the track away (it's heck heavy!).
A brilliant solution Tim! Here in the US we had a railway museum that had one freight customer, once a week the track crews would drop temporary rails across a very busy two track mainline so that empty and loaded cars could be swapped out to the museum. Once it was done the rails were picked back up and mainline traffic could resume. Looked almost exactly like what you've built there.
I believe the Sacramento railroad museum in California does the same thing when servicing their railroad equipment. There is a video somewhere on TH-cam about it.
The Golden State Railroad Museum and the Union Pacific used to do this, in a much more complicated and labor intensive fashion on standard gauge when the museum had to move something from their shops to their museum or serve a customer on the old Isleton branch. When UP took over the Southern Pacific they decided the old 90 degree diamond over the main line wasn't worth it, so they had to stop main line traffic to bolt rails over. Eventually UP put in a diamond closer to 45 degrees.
They use a system like in Queensland Australia to allow sugar cane railways cross the mainlines. They are mechanised and have safety interlocks with the main line. Cheers Peter.
this is genius!! they actually do something quite similar to this in some places, where super light sugar cane tramways (usually 24" gauge) cross over standard gauge rail lines by means of little automated drawbridges. it's pretty cool to see in action!
To be fair, your way of getting across is similar to Welsh quarry railways. At Port Penrhyn, they had a removable set of rails for the narrow gauge to get over the standard gauge, quite ingenious.
They used this method a lot in the Welsh slate quarries (and they still use it on temporary field railways like sugar Cain etc), Nice work. Just have to remember its there when using the other line! I really enjoy all the videos but the railway ones are my favourites (I'm a gricer at heart).
You could use the bridge as a guide for a template and then make small angled joints in the workshop that can be bolted in place. You can then cut the track where it crosses, lower the track to the same level and bolt these angles into position. You will also see the correct angles for the frogs and make them the same way.
When i saw the piece they welded up for the bridge, I thought "okay, now take it back to the shop and weld on the cross rails and other bits, then drop it into a level diamond."
I was thinking samething but there likely isn't room for that. The lower rail may not be able to accommodate the chip wagons anymore. Unless there is somekind of double hinge that would allow the bridge to fold nearly flat on top of itself.. but then there'd be a problem with it fitting back into place again because it's not perpendicular. I hope he does it.
I'm still greatly impressed with your ingenuity and never ending enthusiasm. Can't wait to see the building of the next few hundred metres of track. Thanks for sharing. Greetings from Sweden 🇸🇪.
I like the use of kick switches exclusively it reminds me of almost decade old videos on coal mines and stuff like that and I noticed they used a lot of and almost exclusively kick switches you're actually the one who introduced me to kick switches. also this is why I love watching you work you come up with the craziest solutions that I don't think even I could think of and I think of a lot of things trust me. Although I do advise maybe stress/weight testing the mini bridge to make sure its sturdy if you ever start using engines normally I advise testing with tornado as I expect if the rails do break you don't want a loaded wood chip wagon toppling over and losing a bunch of perfectly good wood chips (it would also be nice to see tornado again and get an update on her condition as well as any future plans for her).
When I was a child, I also built a railroad in my yard. True, made of wooden rails. It never came down to the carriages or the locomotive)) Then my dad dismantled my road for firewood.))
Good job and an elegant solution. As far as portable welding goes Matts Off Road Recovery has a few field repair videos where they have connected stick welding cables to 12 car batteries and produced acceptable welds. May be worth a try next time you need to do some remote welding.
Great video as always! If you’re interested, the components of a real diamond crossing has names. The “lead-ins” that guide the flange into the flangeway are called wing rails, though they’re sometimes called guide or check rails. The corner-point at which the perpendicular regular rails (called stock rails) meet is called the “frog”. This terminology applies to points/switches too! Just fun to know the jargon, lol. Wish I could build a railway like this someday.
Great video thanks for sharing with us all the hard work and creativity y'all put into the problems that arise. The best line in the video was "just a few hundred meters that way" LOL Good luck with the hills and all the brush.
A removable flyover. I want to say this is wrong, yet I have seen this done on full size museum railways in America with success. Your bridge is lightweight, simple, and works. Kudos to simplicity!
Nice one! This is a solution you can find in old O&K catalouges for field railways. Nicely done, and also some bit of playing as well, good to see that you are having fun and Will as well.
When you picked up that bridge I was just amazed. Even though I was watching very carefully it was still a surprise. To bad your not working on a carbon capture system, we would be alot better off by now, cheers.
Well done. I suggest drilling a couple of holes one side and hinging it so it doesn't totally need removing. You'd need to radius the bottom corners of course to clear the fish plates.
That is simple and elegant in its simplicity. It would be a fun step to make the rail into a lifting drawbridge with a receiver lock on one end and a hinge on the other so that it would never need to be bolted and unbolted.
Glad you are making progress! I reccomend building a cordless drill powered cart in the winter. Makes troubleshooting easier when its remote controlled as well.
I previously worked in the railway in Australia Queensland and they used a very similar setup for crossing our railway lines with Cane railway lines for the sugarcane railway but their bridges were a little bit more sophisticated and would raise up-and-down with hydraulics.
You need to look at the US trains cross a welded fast line by raising the unwelded track just a few inches and using the flanges to hit the welded rail to slowly cross the fast welded line ..It's brilliant .
Glad to see the IDRI, (Irish Donkey Railway Inspectorate) keeping a close eye on things, surveying the area before you start any track work is a very important part of there work. 🤗 They should have employed you to do HS2, it would have been finished and completed under budget. 🤬👍🇬🇧
I saw a youtube video of a crossing in Southeast Asia somewhere which used this concept. One set of rails crossed over the other in a similar fashion, and could be raised like a drawbridge when the other line needed to be used. I think the railway(s) were used to haul sugar cane.
Hi Tim, I have seen this method used on a railway in reality. I think it is/was in Australia, where a narrow gauge line crossed a larger gauge. The difference being that one side was hinged and mechanically operated remotely. It allowed the narrow gauge (possibly sugar cane) line to cross without the need to disturb, by cutting tracks, the other main line track. Just checked, see “drawbridge crossing Cane Railway over QR main Meadowvale. And Cane train crossing QR main line near Bundaberg Australia. Any way good thinking by Tim.🇨🇮 🚂 Best wishes from Oxfordshire GB 🚂
Will you need to construct a cattle-guard section for your railway at some point? I don't know if they're common in your part of the world, but in the western US it's common to see short roadway sections with thin parallel metal slats and deep hoof-sized openings into a ditch below. Any cattle attempting to cross will step into one of the gaps and then can't step over the next slat, only backwards. The same principle could make for a cheap field railway cattleguard -- dig a shallow hole across any opening in a fence, and span it with a short rail bridge built with closely spaced thin metal sleepers.
This reminds me of tales I've heard of "temporary" switches installed by MOW crews of old. Apparently they managed to install point rails to take the trains off of the main line and then direct them up and over the mainline rails without a frog onto a temporary side track. Once finished, they could remove the "switch" to allow mainline traffic to pass by. (I wish I could find some primary sources to confirm this!!)
Saw something similar on a film about the Indiana Interurban Railway. The main line railway wouldn't let the electric line cut their line, so they build an identical setup that would lower over the diesel road to let the trollies cross the line.
I love how low-tech this is. Just weld some bits of metal together, shove some old sleepers in, and you've got some new railway. Someday, I want to own enough land to justify a garden railway. Also, a thought. If you could get hold of an old pallet jack, the handle assembly might be good for moving wagons around. It's hinged, it's got a two-handed grip, but it's narrow enough to haul with one hand. Considering you can get brand new ones for £250, old dead ones too jammed up with crap or with wheels worn too thin to be useful might be dirt cheap.
You guys never cease to amaze! That's really impressive how you came up with the bridge idea! Also, I know you already built the air engine, but dont have a high pressure pump (no fuel for the engine) why not try making a 20 or 40 volt electric engine? You could use the Makita batteries you already have. Excited for the next video! 😁
@@henrybest4057 I'd be worried about the safety of that, tbh. Two directions for it to drop in, and a scissor action if it goes back over the rails. I'm thinking maybe make a counterbalanced crane and site it nearby to move the rails, or mount one on a wagon.
@@Skorpychan Then have a stop to prevent it going the full 180. 135 degrees should be enough to clear the lower track's loading gauge. A crane would be too complex.
@@henrybest4057 Not that complex. Just a solid beam with a pivot at the bottom, another beam on top on an axle so it pivots up for luffing, and a hand-cranked winch. Less complex than the air-driven locomotive, or the big flywheel, or a wooden velocar.
The West Ireland Agricutural Railway is coming together nicely, I will gladly watch the railway's further devolopment
❤ Its 1:42am so why am I awake watching someone scrounging around in the weeds building a small railroad empire? Its fascinating! ❤
because good video
Why at 1:42 am? Because its not time for bed yet. Lol
We Are Merely Mortals My Friend… It Happens Too The Best of Us….
lol its 1:51am for me here 😂
While it's not the conventional way of doing things, as a rail enthusiast I can't help but enjoy seeing these the cheaper easier solutions you come up with. These are the kinds of things that you might have found in old time light industrial railways, like your single rail points, the removable crossover, and the construction as a whole, all built for cost and practicality, it's lovely to see. Same for all your projects. While I subscribed for the field railway, the simple farm problem solving is so interesting to watch! I find myself excited to see whatever project your working on.
As always, a very pragmatic and simple solution to a complex problem, Tim. Can I suggest that you hinge the 'bridge', so it's always in place, and can be easily lifted out of the way, but doesn't get lost in the inevitable undergrowth. Looking forward to seeing the cut excavations through the bank, how you're going to contain the errant sheep and where the terminus will be. Well done & thanks for sharing!
I was going to suggest a hinge too.
Then you can’t carry wide wagons over the lowest track
@@pieter5132: it could hinge all the way over: 180°, so it's completely out of the way? But indeed, I was also thinking: a hinge will make this look like a real piece of art. And as Tony mentioned: it won't get lost that way! (although the support with the curve might prove more challenging than it's worth; keeping it as a loose insert is also a realy pragmatic solution!)
I have seen a similar solution, where each single track was hinged, one on each side of the "bridge" so as to put the individual tracks parallel to the lower rail when not in use.
@@wieb83zd it would require slits in the rails to allow for overlap-folding and wheels still being able to roll. If anything, I'd suggest a turntable rather than lifting the track away (it's heck heavy!).
A brilliant solution Tim! Here in the US we had a railway museum that had one freight customer, once a week the track crews would drop temporary rails across a very busy two track mainline so that empty and loaded cars could be swapped out to the museum. Once it was done the rails were picked back up and mainline traffic could resume. Looked almost exactly like what you've built there.
I believe the Sacramento railroad museum in California does the same thing when servicing their railroad equipment.
There is a video somewhere on TH-cam about it.
The Golden State Railroad Museum and the Union Pacific used to do this, in a much more complicated and labor intensive fashion on standard gauge when the museum had to move something from their shops to their museum or serve a customer on the old Isleton branch. When UP took over the Southern Pacific they decided the old 90 degree diamond over the main line wasn't worth it, so they had to stop main line traffic to bolt rails over. Eventually UP put in a diamond closer to 45 degrees.
NO ONE ASKED
They use a system like in Queensland Australia to allow sugar cane railways cross the mainlines. They are mechanised and have safety interlocks with the main line. Cheers Peter.
this is genius!! they actually do something quite similar to this in some places, where super light sugar cane tramways (usually 24" gauge) cross over standard gauge rail lines by means of little automated drawbridges. it's pretty cool to see in action!
Here's a video of such a crossing th-cam.com/video/ho8AzAm9f54/w-d-xo.html
To be fair, your way of getting across is similar to Welsh quarry railways. At Port Penrhyn, they had a removable set of rails for the narrow gauge to get over the standard gauge, quite ingenious.
Nothing but rain 🌧️ so you lighten our day up when we see you Tim .GodBless.💟💟💟🤞🤞☮️☮️✳️✳️✳️✳️
I love Will telling you that you can make your own approval system. Such a lovely exchange. Wonderful to watch you work.
The real genius is in the simplicity of function. Well done!
That's a nice little bridge. I would've loved to see a diamond track crossing, but this can surely do the job for now. Great job!
They used this method a lot in the Welsh slate quarries (and they still use it on temporary field railways like sugar Cain etc), Nice work. Just have to remember its there when using the other line! I really enjoy all the videos but the railway ones are my favourites (I'm a gricer at heart).
Totally agree 👍
It is such a pleasure to watch you come up with practical solutions in your projects. For the most part, simple is often the best.
I do like watching your problem solving.
Making it a diamond bridge was a beautiful solution. I like it.
You could use the bridge as a guide for a template and then make small angled joints in the workshop that can be bolted in place. You can then cut the track where it crosses, lower the track to the same level and bolt these angles into position. You will also see the correct angles for the frogs and make them the same way.
When i saw the piece they welded up for the bridge, I thought "okay, now take it back to the shop and weld on the cross rails and other bits, then drop it into a level diamond."
These videos are such a treat (as Sandra would say about one of her many childhood cakes she bakes).
Nice! Maybe you could put hinges on one side to make it a drawbridge?
Came to say this. Tiny bridge needs to be a tiny drawbridge.
@@JPBennett And a tiny Billy Goat Gruff
I was thinking samething but there likely isn't room for that. The lower rail may not be able to accommodate the chip wagons anymore.
Unless there is somekind of double hinge that would allow the bridge to fold nearly flat on top of itself.. but then there'd be a problem with it fitting back into place again because it's not perpendicular.
I hope he does it.
And add some linkages to the draw bridge, so it will automatically operate signals to indicate which direction should stop or go 😀
Great idea
sad I didn’t see this video earlier! Been wishing for more railway content all day haha
For those left hanging like myself, a dutch arrow is a type of javelin.
Thank you! I was about to ask Tim 😂
I'm still greatly impressed with your ingenuity and never ending enthusiasm. Can't wait to see the building of the next few hundred metres of track. Thanks for sharing. Greetings from Sweden 🇸🇪.
What a fantastic idea for a crossover. Simple and cheap.
Well done
I like the use of kick switches exclusively it reminds me of almost decade old videos on coal mines and stuff like that and I noticed they used a lot of and almost exclusively kick switches you're actually the one who introduced me to kick switches. also this is why I love watching you work you come up with the craziest solutions that I don't think even I could think of and I think of a lot of things trust me. Although I do advise maybe stress/weight testing the mini bridge to make sure its sturdy if you ever start using engines normally I advise testing with tornado as I expect if the rails do break you don't want a loaded wood chip wagon toppling over and losing a bunch of perfectly good wood chips (it would also be nice to see tornado again and get an update on her condition as well as any future plans for her).
Good work, love to watch the railroad work. It is like balm for my brain :D
This is great, 150% outcome on 100% input and a fun day knocking about in the bushes with a buddy!
Still the best best bits are the railways! Love it!
When I was a child, I also built a railroad in my yard. True, made of wooden rails. It never came down to the carriages or the locomotive)) Then my dad dismantled my road for firewood.))
Yes, that’ll work. I love the pragmatic solutions 😊
Marvelous. It's turning into quite a network. 😊
Good job and an elegant solution. As far as portable welding goes Matts Off Road Recovery has a few field repair videos where they have connected stick welding cables to 12 car batteries and produced acceptable welds. May be worth a try next time you need to do some remote welding.
Great video as always! If you’re interested, the components of a real diamond crossing has names. The “lead-ins” that guide the flange into the flangeway are called wing rails, though they’re sometimes called guide or check rails. The corner-point at which the perpendicular regular rails (called stock rails) meet is called the “frog”. This terminology applies to points/switches too! Just fun to know the jargon, lol. Wish I could build a railway like this someday.
Great video thanks for sharing with us all the hard work and creativity y'all put into the problems that arise. The best line in the video was "just a few hundred meters that way" LOL Good luck with the hills and all the brush.
Very satisfying the way that bridge just fits in there perfectly
Brilliant idea, had me a bit confused at first until you showed it at the end but of course I was half asleep watching this lol.
A removable flyover. I want to say this is wrong, yet I have seen this done on full size museum railways in America with success. Your bridge is lightweight, simple, and works.
Kudos to simplicity!
You're so smart, you CAN build anything!
So fun seeing the railway grow
Nice one! This is a solution you can find in old O&K catalouges for field railways. Nicely done, and also some bit of playing as well, good to see that you are having fun and Will as well.
I really enjoy the railway vidoes you do more then most...
What a brilliant simple and effective crossing.
9:17 - We still need to hear from Will what are "Dutch arrows". 🙂
I like your rails! So much cheaper than "real rails". And I love the donkey. My favorite animal.
Outstanding job on building that rail crossing Tim, you will soon have the finish railroad in the area.
Tim’s just a genius.
good work rail team
Outstanding thought process Tim, another interesting chapter in you development, well done.
I have a feeling years from now this little railway will be a tourist attraction
Entirely satisfactory! Thank-you!
Ps the Ford raising railway bridge near here used to work in much the same way.
Fantastic, amazing, inspiring, mind blowing!
A wonderful solution! Great viewing as always. :)
Amazing work! You’re a genius.
It must be nice having such helpful donkeys around the place.
When you picked up that bridge I was just amazed.
Even though I was watching very carefully it was still a surprise.
To bad your not working on a carbon capture system, we would be alot better off by now, cheers.
I like the way Will thinks. "Just make your own approval system."
Every approval system evolves with accidents.
Marvelous! I've seen a TH-cam video of a narrow gauge railway in Australia (I believe that's where it is) which uses the exact same principle!
Marvellous as usual! Love the helpful donkey!
Put one side of the bridge on a hinge Tim! Then it’s like a kick switch in the sky 😊
A combination of madness, Irish luck, and great forward thinking love it well cool 😎
Real progress, great to see!
Well done. I suggest drilling a couple of holes one side and hinging it so it doesn't totally need removing. You'd need to radius the bottom corners of course to clear the fish plates.
Love the railway videos, keep up the great work :)
That is simple and elegant in its simplicity. It would be a fun step to make the rail into a lifting drawbridge with a receiver lock on one end and a hinge on the other so that it would never need to be bolted and unbolted.
Super clever making the crossing a bridge
Glad you are making progress! I reccomend building a cordless drill powered cart in the winter. Makes troubleshooting easier when its remote controlled as well.
You two are having a blast, just great to watch!
👍💪✌
Soon be time for tea Boys. The Great Garlic Railway expansion is underway! Thank you for posting.
This was alot of work! I cant believe this was the easier solution
The bit about the time machine was hilarious! Keep up the great work, love this channel :)
I previously worked in the railway in Australia Queensland and they used a very similar setup for crossing our railway lines with Cane railway lines for the sugarcane railway but their bridges were a little bit more sophisticated and would raise up-and-down with hydraulics.
You need to look at the US trains cross a welded fast line by raising the unwelded track just a few inches and using the flanges to hit the welded rail to slowly cross the fast welded line ..It's brilliant .
Brilliant! Don't try to do what's right, do what works!!
Tim has quite a flair for Budget brilliance on developing his railway
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant!
Glad to see the IDRI, (Irish Donkey Railway Inspectorate) keeping a close eye on things, surveying the area before you start any track work is a very important part of there work. 🤗 They should have employed you to do HS2, it would have been finished and completed under budget. 🤬👍🇬🇧
been waiting for this thank you Tim, great video as always cheers
This was actually used at some places where low priority railroads (local narrowgauge for example) crossed a high priority railroad.
3:12 😍 What a sweet animal.
You found the mattock! Hallelujah!
Looking very good Tim 😊
brilliant! I can't wait to see those few hundred meters that way too.
What fiendish ingenuity!😁
Bro is single handled with a lot of support createing his own railway.
I saw a youtube video of a crossing in Southeast Asia somewhere which used this concept. One set of rails crossed over the other in a similar fashion, and could be raised like a drawbridge when the other line needed to be used. I think the railway(s) were used to haul sugar cane.
Hi Tim, I have seen this method used on a railway in reality. I think it is/was in Australia, where a narrow gauge line crossed a larger gauge. The difference being that one side was hinged and mechanically operated remotely. It allowed the narrow gauge (possibly sugar cane) line to cross without the need to disturb, by cutting tracks, the other main line track.
Just checked, see
“drawbridge crossing Cane Railway over QR main Meadowvale.
And Cane train crossing QR main line near Bundaberg Australia.
Any way good thinking by Tim.🇨🇮 🚂
Best wishes from Oxfordshire GB 🚂
cant wait for the next part of the railway
THIS IS LEGENDARY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Always impressed with the work you do!
Very Very wonderful creativity. I am really impressed by your this video. I am waiting for your next same videos ❤️
👍👍
The Donkey was clearly the railway inspector
Will you need to construct a cattle-guard section for your railway at some point? I don't know if they're common in your part of the world, but in the western US it's common to see short roadway sections with thin parallel metal slats and deep hoof-sized openings into a ditch below. Any cattle attempting to cross will step into one of the gaps and then can't step over the next slat, only backwards. The same principle could make for a cheap field railway cattleguard -- dig a shallow hole across any opening in a fence, and span it with a short rail bridge built with closely spaced thin metal sleepers.
This reminds me of tales I've heard of "temporary" switches installed by MOW crews of old. Apparently they managed to install point rails to take the trains off of the main line and then direct them up and over the mainline rails without a frog onto a temporary side track. Once finished, they could remove the "switch" to allow mainline traffic to pass by. (I wish I could find some primary sources to confirm this!!)
cant wait to see more of the train!
That is an ingenious solution.
Saw something similar on a film about the Indiana Interurban Railway. The main line railway wouldn't let the electric line cut their line, so they build an identical setup that would lower over the diesel road to let the trollies cross the line.
I love how low-tech this is. Just weld some bits of metal together, shove some old sleepers in, and you've got some new railway.
Someday, I want to own enough land to justify a garden railway.
Also, a thought. If you could get hold of an old pallet jack, the handle assembly might be good for moving wagons around. It's hinged, it's got a two-handed grip, but it's narrow enough to haul with one hand. Considering you can get brand new ones for £250, old dead ones too jammed up with crap or with wheels worn too thin to be useful might be dirt cheap.
There is actually a similar bridge crossing in the Wegberg-Wildenrath Testcenter, although very slightly more complicated 😀
You guys never cease to amaze! That's really impressive how you came up with the bridge idea! Also, I know you already built the air engine, but dont have a high pressure pump (no fuel for the engine) why not try making a 20 or 40 volt electric engine? You could use the Makita batteries you already have. Excited for the next video! 😁
Very nice video Tim!
Put hinges in one end of the bridge so it it can stand upright 😊
But then you'd have loading gauge issues with the line underneath.
@@Skorpychan Not if the movement isn't limited to 90 degrees. It could flip right over to 180 degrees and be completely out of the way.
@@henrybest4057 I'd be worried about the safety of that, tbh. Two directions for it to drop in, and a scissor action if it goes back over the rails.
I'm thinking maybe make a counterbalanced crane and site it nearby to move the rails, or mount one on a wagon.
@@Skorpychan Then have a stop to prevent it going the full 180. 135 degrees should be enough to clear the lower track's loading gauge. A crane would be too complex.
@@henrybest4057 Not that complex. Just a solid beam with a pivot at the bottom, another beam on top on an axle so it pivots up for luffing, and a hand-cranked winch. Less complex than the air-driven locomotive, or the big flywheel, or a wooden velocar.