What are things called that hold down the rail road tracks?

Question

They look like spikes almost. I was wondering you could tell me what they are made of too? steel or metal? Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

first they make the bed, then lay wood ties, then lay rails, then metal cleets have holes for spikes, the spikes are driven through holes in cleets to hold rail in place. then the train goes over it. spikes are iron.

Answer 2

You get the jist of what you wanted to know from Hoghead. There are spikes, or sometimes railroads use spring clips. However, these devices don't hold the track down. The track doesn't need to be held down. They hold the track guage, which is more important.

Answer 3

The securing of the rail is a " component system" utilizing ballast (rock), cross ties (sleepers), tie plates, angle bars, angle bar bolts, spikes and rail "anchors" (aka 'creepers').

If your piece is in  "J" shape, it is a creeper.  These are applied to the bottom of the rail, perpendicular to the rail on either side of the tie plate / cross tie structure.  These keep "ribbon rail" from expanding excessively along their length due to high temperature, with no expansion joints for miles, in some cases.

If threaded, it is an "angle bar" bolt.  Angle bars are used inside and out when joining two ends of two rails together.  They make this connection on the "web" of the rail, which is the thin, vertical part of the rail, between the base and the ball of the rail.

When dealing with roadbed, all that isn't wood, rock or concrete is steel.  The system must be able to withstand tremendous, adverse forces.

Answer 4

They are called rail road spikes. The wood blocks they go into are rail road ties. I a pretty sure they are steel.

Answer 5

That's it, rail spikes made from steel.  Tie plates sit under the rails and are used to attach the rails to the railroad ties and the spikes anchor all of this into place (unless concrete ties are used in which case a type of clip is used to anchor the entire track structure together).

Answer 6

Gravity

Answer 7

In the United States, they are called Spikes, if they are used on wood ties.  They are 6 inches long and 5/8 inch square with a pointed and sharp end that goes into the wood railroad tie.  You use a "spike maul" to drive the spike into the wood tie.

On Railroad lines with large traffic volumn or railroad cars, several railroads are changing from wood ties to concrete ties.  The rail fasteners used for concrete ties are made by a company called "Safelock" and are either a Safelock I or a Safelock III variety.  If you place your fingers on your hand in a position to throw a curveball as in throwing a baseball, that is how they look - with 2 "prongs" that go over the top of the base of the rail, while being seated within a holddown device on top of the concrete tie.

Steel ties are also used in some ares and they use what is called a "pandrol" clip - shaped like a pigs tail and sometimes called "pigtails".

Steel s***w lags or "coach screws" are sometimes used on bridges, Railroad crossings or railroad switches.  Hope this helped.

Answer 8

G'day!  

The things that hold down the rail onto the sleepers are called dogspikes.  These go into drilled holes on the wooden sleepers and can be either belted in with a sledgehammer or screwed in if they are threaded.  The threaded dogspikes are generally used on sections of track where there is a lot of stress on the rails - going around corners or on gradients.  

The dogspikes that are belted in by sledgehammer are normally made from steel, but not aluminium.  The s***w in ones are steel, but I am not sure what sort of steel they are as they do not rust like the normal dogspikes.  

Just as an interesting point to this...  On some railway networks, the steel plates that go under the rail and sit on the sleepers (which are called fishplates) can be seen to be there, on some lines, they are not used.  These fishplates are made to suit the dogspike that is being used for the location.  The job of the fishplate is for the fishplate to sit on the sleeper, as there is a lip on each side that the rail sits between.  There are holes that are already cast into the fishplate, and the dogspikes are either sledgehammered or screwed into the sleeper.  When placing the dogspikes into the sleeper, it is important that the head of the spike does catch the bottom flange or the base of the rail.  This is what stops the rail from moving when a train is going over it.  

On all of the railways that I have seen, the s***w in type of dogspike is used on the outer edges of the fishplates or on the outside of the rail.  They used standard dogspikes on the inside of the rail to allow for the flange of the wheels to pass over the top of the dogspikes.  Because the s***w in dogspikes have a 20 - 35 mm head on them, they are never used on the inside of the track between the rails.  

On concrete sleepers, there is a special dogspike / clip that they use.  The rails still sit on the sleepers but the dogspike that is used has a small amount of give to it, it acts like a spring in effect to allow a bit of movement without doing damage to the sleeper itself.  To be honest, the best way to describe this would be to call it a clip moreso than a dogspike.  It is nearly circular in shape and one side sits on the edge of the rail and the other side goes through a clip which anchors to the sleeper.  

I hope that this is of some help to you.

Ding.