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Maintenance of Way II
Prakash Tendulkar, San Jose, CA.

 

On a fine Saturday morning in mid-May 2002, I was having a breakfast as usual in a country style eatery in San Jose with dozen of friends, a ritual we performed every week for the last 15 years. The eatery is on the west side of Monterey Highway, a road I traveled to work for two decades and IBM's disk drive plant on the west.

I noticed an unusual train passing the tracks by Monterey Highway. I cursed myself for not carrying my camera.

Later, when I was traveling the same road for an errand, I found the same rake traveling in reverse, the locos were pushing it.

I went home, grabbed the camera and stopped by the tracks.

It was a rake to drop off welded rails. CalTrain will introduce a high speed rail from San Jose to San Francisco in near future and they wanted UPRR to upgrade the tracks.

Rake1.jpg (56828 bytes)  The rake

Rake2.jpg (54609 bytes)   Rake3.jpg (36297 bytes)  Close up of welded rails

Rake4.jpg (50517 bytes)  Another view of rake

Rake5.jpg (59028 bytes)  Viewing north. My faithful buddy, Toyota truck is on the right.

Rake6.jpg (79165 bytes)  Rails rolling on rollers.

Rake7.jpg (64124 bytes)  Rake10.jpg (75818 bytes)  Digging trench in ballast to accommodate rails.

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