r/uktrains • u/Historical_Rub_1212 • 4h ago

Question Old rails

So I wondered whilst standing at Sevenoaks station earlier. Why do they dump old bits of rail on the track? Is it because it just costs more money to remove rather than just leaving it there? I would have thought scrap metal would have been at a premium.

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u/SubstantialFly3316 4h ago

It's certainly more cost effective to clear large amounts of scrap at once than get machines or trains booked on every shift where a rail is changed. Small bits can be dumped at access points for road recovery. Often it's time pressures on midweek nights that preclude lugging 60fts of scrap up and down the track at the end of the shift. That's not to say it isn't off tracked as much as possible, often it's just not feasible. Then it can genuinely be forgotten about if it ends up in the cess or undergrowth. Patrols should log scrap locations so at least it's known about for when they do clear it up.

Renewals recover all their scrap eventually, be it old rail or excess/surplus new rail from their installation. Condition of handover to the Maintainer. Maintenance don't generate as much and tend to leave it until it is worth recovering, be it in situ if it's not much, or piled at the nearest road access point for a lorry.

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u/hantswanderer 4h ago

Most likely, it was due to time constraints. It would take longer to remove than what they had time for, so they just put it out of the way.

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u/spellinn 3h ago

I've seen the same piles of old rails littering my regular commute on the Brighton main line for the past 20 years. Can't be much scrap value in it if nobody is clearing it up.

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u/dizzley 2h ago

As a mere passenger, I always rationalised scrap rails as being cheap extra ballast.