A fire on railroad tracks is not always a bad thing, especially when it's #NotWhatYouThink #NWYT #shorts Music: Legions - Jo Wandrini Footage: Select images videos from Getty Images Shutterstock Videoblocks Creative Commons
Most mechanical, construction, or state jobs don't allow you to wear shorts regardless of the weather. It's a safety thing. You're lucky if you get to wear T-shirts
Omg yes!! No matter how hot we have have to wear trousers and and the least the company t shirt and as I'm from the UK and the company is cheap there is no summer and winter uniform so the t shirt and even the polo is damn hot in the summer and in the winter doesn't even matter because you'll still have your company jumper, fleece, bomber jacket and at times rain coat so why can't they make the t shirt and polo more breathable.. and don't get me started with the headwear
Although from experience I can say this is in south east Asia where there are very little safety rules, it’s because wearing trousers is cooler 🧊 and the rails may be soo hot they could burn their legs on them.
Train controller: "Nothing to worry passengers, the tracks are only on fire, perfectly normal" Passangers: " Oh just tracks on fire,nothing to worry about"...(sudden realisation) "Ohhhhh nnnooooo!!!"
Actually, railroads install propane switch heaters that come on automatically to prevent ice and snow from causing problems. Similarly, when replacing the rail in the winter time the track was heated using very large propane heaters that heated the rail to 107°. This helps to prevent sun kinks due to expansion in the summer & broken rail in the winter from the rail contracting. Shorts are not worn because they aren't approved safety gear.
@infunerous666 I worked on both steel and a tie gangs. Here in the northwest, they are used quite a bit. It's been a number of years since I was on a steel gang but we always used one. Depending on what the install temperature needed to be for that section of track at that location. Prevents the rail from both breaking when it's cold and sun kinks when it's hot. The automatic propane heaters are used on pretty much every dual control switch on bnsf railroad. If the dispatcher is going to throw the switch, it's probably going to be heated. If I'm going to throw it, it may or may not be heated.
My grandpa (worked for the Deutsche Bahn) told me, they use electric switch heaters today. The problem is when snow build-up prevents the switch from reaching its end positions, because then the track has to be closed till the rail road staff solves the problem and the line can be used again
@@kevingrubb9835 "go get the bolt stretcher" is a common hazing ritual for apprentices when the old fart needs to get some work done. It'll flummox the hell out of the newbie for a hour or so while the old guy does real work distraction free. The apprentice in this joke realizes that a bolt/track stretcher doesn't exist, and knows that the old guy is hazing them, so they refuse to go get it, even though it actually exists.
@@kevingrubb9835 The 'Track Stretcher' does exist and I've used them in Toledo in the 1970's on the Penn Central Railroad. But it was faster just to pour burning diesel fuel 39 feet in one direction and 39 feet in the other direction. You could easily watch the two pieces of rail come together. Also was used in fixing 'Pull Aparts'
@@phillyphakename1255 if the apprentice is smart enough. They’ll know they are being messed with and still go search for the board stretcher for hours while getting paid. Just following bosses orders haha
It would make sense for that not to even be a real thing in the first place and the reason why is simple logic… Just think about it… what do you think would be the effect of sliding a piece of freaking ice along a tiny segment of the rail a little bit? Sure, it would cool down a tiny bit but it would instantly heat back up… you know how much money it would cost to have dudes running around with blocks of ice on the tracks to “cool them down on hot days”? 😂 cmon… it’s steel… it doesn’t care about a “hot day” it’s not some greasy operator sweating nuts with a grimey tshirt smelling up the local convenience store… it is a railroad track… it’s going to take a lot more than that to give it meaningful noticeable problems… Now! If we are talking about repairs and installation, then definitely, it would make perfect sense to cool or heat localized chunks of rail with huge ice cubes to make the tolerances required for welding the rails together… but after that, as the OP said, it’s basically down to messing with the new guy.
Yes they are gonna mess with him by buying a huge ice cube. If they wanted to mess with him they'd use regular ice cubes out of the freezer and have him rub then all over the rail. Smh.
Same reason you don't see firefighters wearing shorts. Lol. In warm weather, shorts can be nice.. But when it gets beyond a certain temperature.. You go right back to long pants.. And even big heavy coats. Also just look at the Arab Bedouin dudes, who've worn big robes and full head and face coverings for hundreds, hell thousnsds of years. Sometimes protecting yourself from the heinous sun beating down is more important than being slightly cooler to the ambient air, which is already over 100 degrees anyway. Although in reality. The railroad workers not wearing shorts is probably down to a health and safety/OSHA regulation more than anything else. Tripping over a rail or losing your footing or something and then falling on those loose pointy ballast rocks, is a son a bitch with shorts on.
One correction: the tracks in the clips aren’t on fire, the switches are, and it’s prevention of icing that they do it in this instance. They do use the process for heating rails to stress free temperatures in winter.
I used to work AC and when it's 120+ outside and your on a roof you don't want any sun on you. Our uniform was long sleeves and pants no exceptions and it's actually way more comfortable
I remember when the tracks were set on fire in the clips you used. IIRC those in particular were used to keep the switches from freezing up because of the record cold that year
@@srpacific areas of the U.S. have gas fired switch heaters also. Setting fire to switches is an old technique that isn’t used often anymore. Then again China is still mired in steam engine technology in places, so I don’t expect them to be using more modern equipment for such things.
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@Null nah, i'd just learn my lesson and not kneel down on hot rails in future. I work with hot engines everyday, it's amazing how quickly you learn not to blindly stick your arm down the side of an exhaust manifold to try and retrieve a dropped socket.
OSHA, plus long sleeves shirts (I know you said shorts) but long sleeves help protect you skin from the sun burning you, plus your sweat sticks to the clothing making it wet, so when you get a breeze it cools you down.
@@pal181 regardless of wetness having something covering your skin from the sun is important. People living in deserts wear robes because it reduces the heat and radiation of the sun. With proper layering it's like both insulation and having some airflow to keep you cool.
@@AhuizotlXiuhthat’s also one of the original ideas behind the handkerchief a lot of construction workers will wear either a yellow or orange one under a hat blocking sun and cooling them off when they sweat
If the tracks get too hot, most likely trains will have to slow down to a painfully low speed. I’ve seen this happen on a railroad I live next to and it’s called heat restrictions. It was going slower than my running speed. On a super hot day the rails can get very very hot and like I said trains must slow down.
Yeah it's a real problem out here in the middle of bum f*** nowhere USA because our rail is in so bad of a condition because the company's just don't give a s*** that when they do run it during the summer they might as well just get out and push it it is going so slow
The “tracks on fire” is actually a system of natural gas burners that are lit when there is a risk of snow or ice freezing the switches. (I think that footage is actually the LIRR yard near Jamaica Station, but could be totally wrong)
The Gornergratbahn in Zermatt even has metal inserts they put between two pieces of rail in winter and remove for summer. This is to make the gap smaller and the ride more comfortable
You know I feel like making someone "Ice the tracks" has the same feeling as making an apprentice go find a "left-handed screw driver" from the hardware store
Ahhh....memories. An airline Captain asked a new female flight attendant to go back and ask the ground engineer for a loan of their left-handed screwdriver. She did so and suffered some serious ribbing from everyone in the vicinity. A strange personal item appeared in the Captain's coffee sometime later. The lasting effect was that Airline Captain thought it wise to bring his coffee in a thermos thereafter. Please do not ask how I know this.
I went to Japan on exchange in high school, coming from Australia I've never had to deal with a winter cold enough to affect transport. I was a bit worried one morning taking the train to school when I saw that the tracks were on fire in some places, but I was told they do this specifically under the points so they don't freeze together.
When they went to install the last section of the St Louis arch they were delayed a couple hours and the heat of the sun had stretched the legs enough where the last piece didn't fit. They used fire trucks blasting water on the base to shrink the legs and fit the final piece. This story made me think of that.
The switch tracks are set on fire. So you can use them. In the winter time. The cold steel against Cold steel. Setting on a metal plate. Will get Frost buildup in it. Making it extremely hard to switch. So they set fire to them. Defrost the steel and evaporate any water left behind. It has to be done several times if it's really cold out.
set on fire to reduce the likelihood of cracks... Definitely an american that wrote that part. European (mostly scandanavian) countries have been setting pointwork on fire for decades, in winter and snowy / icy conditions. This is because while you can remove snow from the rails... ice is a real danger for points not switching to the right track if frozen. You can send a guy out to check every point and crossover to de-ice it... Or you can install gas pipes and igniters on every install. When it goes cold... turn on the gas and ignite the fires. Heat melts ice, rails warm up and retain heat for several hours. Preventing ice. So you just turn the burners on every few hours and it de-ices the pointwork and surrounding rails. As a bonus effect it also warms the grease on the sliding surfaces for the points and allows them to slide easier. Amazing how thermal dynamics work.
A reason to not wear shorts in the heat is to sweat less and prevent dehydration. Pants allow saturation of sweat plus you have a level of insulation that will keep you cooler.
The on fire section is literally just so that the twins don't derail as they cross over those sections of tracks and sometimes you catch them on fire to prevent points and switches from freezing up
@@foundinstpetersburg They're using it to stop ice from building up to stop switches Freezing and not operating correctly so fire is the best Option because electric heating equipment has to be out all year and is kind of expensive.
I remember years ago, when I was pretty young, me and my dad walked the tracks in town at night in the winter, and we noticed the splitter area was snow free, turns out they had a propane heater setup to keep them working properly,
i also ice myself. i come from a cold country, and am living now in italy. its hot af in the summers. i eat ice and put ice on my body daily during the summer
Stressing continuous welded rails does NOT prevent heat and cold tensions. It prevents/mitigates stresses caused by heating only. When the temperature of the rail increases beyond what it was when it was laid, it undergoes compressive stress due to expansion, which can cause buckling. When it cools below that temperature, it undergoes tensile stress due to contraction, which can cause cracking/breaking of the welds. Tensile stress is a lot easier to deal with than compressive stress: you just have to make the welds strong enough to withstand it. Buckling is a lot harder to control, as you have to reinforce the rail so it can't bend side to side along its entire length, which can be very difficult. To account for this, rail is laid either on really hot days, or is heated and/or stretched when being laid/welded, so that the rails primarily experience tensile stress rather than compressive stress. It's a lot easier to fix a broken weld than to fix a buckled track, and rails with broken welds are a lot less likely to derail a train than a buckled track.
@notwhayouthink That's not why the tracks are on fire. The fires are there to keep the switches from freezing. If the switches freeze, the tracks cannot be adjusted to change the path the train follows. (These switches are not like light switches. They are moveable segments of track that can be adjusted depending on which path/route a train needs to follow. If they are frozen, they can't be adjusted.) So, I guess it's really not what YOU think.
Railroad tracks aren't set on fire to reduce the likelihood of cracks. Only the switsches are set on fire to prevent them from being freezed to keep their functionality.
In heat you actually wear more clothes to put a burrier from heat. I use to work in a Glass Plant, extremely hot. We wore long thick clothes as protection and it actually kept our temps lower. It's part of the reason in extremely hot countries they cover their entire bodies. Wearing less exposes skin to direct heat and prevent burning. Think of an oven mitten.
