"ACW Railway lines" Topic

Were the rails and sleepers ever layed on hardcore. The contemporary photos Iīve looked at appear to Show the sleepers and lines layed on earth and the packing between the sleepers also earth

I have the book "Civil War Railroads & Models" by Edwin P. Alexander (1989). On page 49 of the book he states that well-dried earth (sifted) or foundry sand (finer than ordinary sand) will do for ballast. He also states that in the south most of the roads used earth, sand or gravel for ballast. Oh, and he is talking for use on O or S scale railroads (1/4" or 3/16" scale).

Were the rails and sleepers ever layed on hardcore.

I don't know what you mean by that. Crushed stone ballast was likely in wide use. A railyard could look like just a rough paved surface. But bare earth, when it becomes mud, would be a nightmare.

Or I may be wrong.

On page 49 of the book he states that well-dried earth (sifted) or foundry sand (finer than ordinary sand) will do for ballast.

Sifting well-dried earth or foundry sand seem to be suggestions for modeling, not what the prototype needed under 1:1 scale mainlines.

(Which I guess is what was meant.)

Any track laid on bare earth would not last past the first rainstorm. I used to work for a RR museum and some of our rolling stock dated to the 1870's i.e. very close to ACW period. Rails and ties needed heavy ballast to stay put. Lee

Robert Black III, The Railroads of the Confederacy, 1952, p.12, states:

"In an age without dynamite, heavy grading was avoided wherever possible, and the typical railroad of the Confederacy was carried upon the thinnest practical embankment of raw earth."

"Stone or gravel ballast was seldom used. An exception was the Virginia & Tennessee, which had embarked upon an enterprising program that specified a layer of ballast beneath every rail joint. But everywhere else the ties were laid with little ceremony on a base of native earth, and little effort was extended upon drainage beyond the simplest kind of ditching."

These "rail joints" would appear to be every 18 to 24 feet, the length of the average rail section (p. 13).

I am recalling those wonderful old motion pictures of the building of the Panama Canal. Some showed where cranes would lift up entire long sections of track, rails, ties and all, and just move them twenty or thirty feet to one side and plunk them down and they would then be ready to use.

Thanks all for the Input.
Iīm thinking of scratch Building railway tracks for the ACW period and didnīt want something ending up looking like a modern railway with Ballast under the sleepers but was
suprised to see the pics showing nothing but earth.
@Chris. Hardcore is a layer of rough Stone or whatever, basically Ballast so a road or in this case, tracks could be laid on top. The pics only Show the sleepers/tracks on and packed with earth. I also thought that canīt possibly be the case as when it rains it would turn to mud so there must be some sort of infill of Stone under the sleepers, the earth just used to fill out the spaces between.

I suppose a Train, being wide(ish) Long and moving at Speed would distribute itīs weight so packed earth would do.

Helps explain why Southern RRs could go much faster than 25 mph.

I have the feeling that many folks commenting on here are not familiar with the clay soils of the south. Also, areas through upland areas usually had a fairly short distance to rock underneath. Then there is the sandy soils of the lowlands. In either case the embankments held up well (and there are plenty of these embankments still visible today from long abandoned right of ways. Southern railways became a problem as the war extended over the years due to a lack of capital and manpower to keep the lines in good order. Rotting cross ties and deteriorating rails where a big issue and most of the focus was on military production (there was not real effort to militarize the railways so the private companies were left on their own. Also the south faced a problem from so many different scales that it was hard to interchange materials and rolling stock.

The main question has already been addressed. It was not unusual for the track on ACW era American railways to be laid directly on the ground, or on a slightly raised bed of earth. We could go into more detail on track and roadbed, but unless you are planning on doing a particular railroad then duplicating the general appearance of the roads pictured would be adequate.

I did want to comment on something in BTCTerrainman's post. The differences in southern track gauges are overstated. Differences in track gauge existed in both the north and in the south. The north had standard gauge, Pennsy gauge, 4'10" gauge and 6' gauge. Hooker's troops travelling from Virginia to Tennessee travelled on track of three different gauges.

Oops! I meant could NOT go much faster than 25 mph.

Sight of all those 4-4-0s makes me want to fire up my older computer (with Windows 95) and play Railroad Tycoon again.

Lee494, true they need it, but they didn't have it. Ballasting simply didn't come along until the late 1880s or so. Buster Keaton's joke on how bad things were before someone came up with the great "advance" in design. YouTube link

Check this site usmrr.blogspot.com

The pictures don't do Bernie's layout justice. It is something awesome to behold in person.

Bernie certainly does sweat the small stuff. Here's a link to a model he built of the Alexandria VA waterfront. link