Re: The Engineering Fan

A easy way to find the sharpness of you existing track. Chalk the gauge of outside rail every 31 feet and then get two trainees to hold the end of a 62'chord string between the first and third mark. You measure the distance from the tangent string to the gauge rail between then, in inches, and that will be the degrees in curvature, examp: 10" means 10 degrees. Some of you will remember the back-breaking job those apprenace jobs were when you spent all winter out 'string-lining' the Division's curves. The job also involved driving off-set survey stakes, computting the proper curve on a string-lining computation sheet, and then lining the track from those stakes.
Careful, this days and age, you must have track o/s, a flagman, red vest and hard hats, a discussion session before you go on track, and a day in class for "on-track-safety" rules, annually. Not saying anything about radio, high-rail truck and other perks, coffee.