If you were downtown around lunch in Opelika you saw a Rail Grinder going thru town heading west. I thought I’d run it down for a picture, and didn’t catch it until I got to Gay Street in Auburn. So, what’s it all about.
Harsco Track Technologies’ rail grinders are designed to grind the top and sides of the running rails on both main line, crossings and switches. These grinders can reduce the cost and frequency of track maintenance operations – by performing preventive grinding of new rails to clear defects such as millscale, long waves, and weld profiles; eliminating track vibrations by removing corrugations or other defects on the running surface; or removing fatigued metal and reprofiling the rail for proper wheel to rail contact.
From the Archives — originally published on the Opelika Daily News on October 23, 2006. View the original page.
