Re: Scope of the job

The art of marginal tie replacement is to stabilize the structure such that you don't lose good ties adjacent to bad ties. As Earl says, a lot
of Class 1's do large batch changes using a specialized crew on a timed
basis. That's great except not for a smaller operator. SP had spots up on
the Jawbone with 5-7 bad ties in a row and all they'd do is throw a 10
mph slow order until they got around to doing a batch change. Since track
class is based on number of bad ties per length of rail the 10 mph slow
order kept everything legal. For C&TS's part, with a more normal track
gang, throwing in good ties to break up the number of adjacent bad ties
keeps the remaining good from splitting from the increased loads. I'm not
sure 2500 is a magic number but it does seem like a start.