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Railroad Tie Cranes

Please note that the images here depict general railroad MOW equipment, not tie cranes.

Railroad tie cranes are some of the simplest, and smallest, types of railroad maintenance equipment in use today. They are also the most common, as they can be found on railroads large and small doing general maintenance duties, whether it be laying out new ties or picking up and deposing of used ones lying along the right-of-way.

Railroad tie cranes usually work as some kind of mechanized gang, usually as part of a tie gang (which today normally consists of an army of machines, not men). However, you can also find them out and about working in a small detail doing general maintenance, such as sprucing up the right-of-way a bit by picking up spent railroad ties.

Today's tie gangs includes such machines as spike or rail anchor pullers (which pull the spikes/anchors clear of the tie), tie cranes (which remove the railroad ties once they are free of the rails), tie extractors/inserters (different from a tie crane these machines work vertically to remove or replace the railroad tie from underneath the rail), and spike inserters (as you might have guessed these machines use hydraulics to quickly drive spikes down in the tie plate and tie itself).

If very heavy work is being done other large equipment will be used such as a mechanized tie relaying machine and/or even a rail train if new rail is to be laid. As it is, tie gangs may look like machines simply heading off to work in an elephant line. However, they are actually very coordinated work details with each machine and accompanying operator assigned a very specific task to get the work done as quickly as possible. The reason for speed and hastiness in finishing a maintenance job is simply, to keep the trains and goods moving. Delays are quite costly and avoided at all costs because if the freight isn't delivered the railroad's don't get paid!

Railroad tie cranes usually weigh just a few tons and are no more than five or ten feet in length. They sort of look like a miniature excavator without the bucket scoop as the machine features a small cab on a fixed platform which can move, along with its boom, 360 degrees to pick up new or used ties (the boom can usually handle between 500 pounds and a half-ton load) and place them where needed.

If the tie crane is working with new ties it will place them across and directly on the rails so that the tie inserters, which will come along behind them, can quickly grab the ties and place them back under the rails. The purpose of doing this is simply to speed the time in which it takes to replace ties. Time is money, and that phrase rings ever so true in the railroad industry.

For more information about railroad maintenance equipment you may want to consider picking up a copy of Brian Solomon's book, Railway Maintenance: The Men and Machines That Keep the Railroads Running. I have a copy of the book and not only used it for reference in covering all of the railroad maintenance equipment featured on this site but also found it very interesting as I learned much about a subject of the industry I had known only little about before. If you’re interested in learning more about the maintenance aspect of railroading you will definitely enjoy this book. If you're interested in perhaps purchasing it please visit The Railroad Diamond by clicking the tab in the menu to your left marked "TRD Store".

Also, for even more information about railroad tie cranes, ballast cleaners, tie extractors/inserters, railroad undercutters, ditch diggers, and other MOW equipment please click here to return to the main menu.

For more reading about tie cranes you may want to consider the book Railway Maintenance Equipment: The Men and Machines That Keep the Railroads Running from noted author Brian Solomon. Throughout the book's 128 pages Solomon covers all types of maintenance equipment from tampers and undercutters to Jordan Spreaders and rotary snow plows. I own this book myself and have used it as reference material for this site many times. It's a great read on an often little understood area of railroading. If you're interested in perhaps purchasing this book please visit the link below which will take you to ordering information through Amazon.com, the trusted online shopping network.

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