So I've noticed that the top of rails in town have been painted yellow. Can anyone tell me what this means? Is it to help the rails or is it a marker for MOW or something else?
Any chance you can grab a photo of this? Is it just at danger places, such as road crossings? Or everywhere? I wonder if it was done by some overzealous civilian, concerned with safety? I have doubts the railroad would actually apply paint, as doing so might conceal a defect otherwise spotted by eye, and cause big troubles.
I tried to find a good spot to take a pic, but with this rain it's hard to see. Although today I noticed that it ended right at a crossing and began right after it and continued on. It's not exactly a solid yellow stripe on the rail, it blends in with the rail pretty well but you can tell it was added.
Hmmmm. Well, to my eye, that doesn't look like paint. More like corrosion. If you had any of the recent snows, I wonder if they applied a melting agent to the roads? If so, it could have easily been carried down the tracks by passing trains.
That sounds plausible. I know around here they will spray some kind of liquid on the roads ahead of winter storms, it's supposed to help prevent the roads from icing too bad. Goes down as a series of lines and they count on traffic to spread it around. I'd imagine it could easily be pulled down the rails by passing trains, and could well react to the steel.
Either calcium or magnesium chloride. Both compounds remain viable ice melters far below temperatures regular sodium chloride works. Problem is, those compounds are mixed with a carrier that contains sugars. And they dehydrate after the melting is done and become kind of gooey and adhere to the other grit and grime on the road, and begin to pull moisture out of the atmosphere to retain a moisture equilibrium. Any iron based metal this sludge is adhered to then of course begins to rust. I agree it seems logical that a passing train probably spread it down the rails. Do they throw down sand or antiskid after the snow and ice starts building up on that road? Sent from the magical mystery box
I assume the color is a light coat of rust. Whenever we have continuous light rain like today, the KCS Gulfport Branch rails will turn that color within a couple of hours of a train passing. This morning's northbound went through about 9 and the rails looked like your photos when I went over the crossing about 12. The reason there's no rust on the crossing is because the cars wipe the rails clean. So what you see is nothing special, just good old mill scale. BTW, thanks for your photos.
Your welcome, and thanks everyone. We've had about 3 straight weeks or either rain, snow, freezing rain, more snow and more rain so it definitely makes sense now.
