Ever see a train lay a track
Too f*king cool the machinery we humans have developed as we pass through this life. All in the name of doing a better job, in this case meaning more uniform so as the new high speed trains have a better, smoother track to travel on. madokie
http://www.wimp.com/traintrack/
EVER SEE A TRAIN LAY NEW TRACK OVER THE REMOVED EXISTING TRACK ?
This is what is happening from Chicago to St. Louis for the high speed rail.
People were stopping along the highway taking pictures.
For those who live in the Springfield area and have seen all the machines running up and down the tracks, here is a link to a video that shows you how the concrete ties and rail are put in place.
The road bed was raised 13 inches to accommodate the new high speed rail line between St. Louis, MO and Chicago, IL.
There are only two of these track laying machines in the world, one here and one in Europe
http://www.wimp.com/traintrack/
I wonder what all those laborers who laid the first cross country tracks would think if they could see this!
= new reply since forum marked as read
So much infrastructure work! Train tracks, new highways!
We need more bridges, but what I see is WORK and PROGRESS.
And I thank OBAMA.
What's more, don't tell ANYONE: The work on the California Highway 99 corridor between Bakersfield and Stockton is ALL for HIGH SPEED RAIL!!!
Freepers HATE that, but they don't even know it's happening.
New overcrossings, far wider and higher than necessary, and really broad medians (between north and south bound traffice).
High Speed Rail is here, you mfers! (not you madokie) and it's here to stay.
I'm sick of having to try to keep up with the Chinese.
We don't have even one truly high speed train in all of the US. Our best is the Acela.
Here's China:
Seriously, I will have to watch this when I get home.
or the train laying its own tracks?
Kidd'n 
if the OP had ever seen a grown man naked, but I wasn't sure if they would catch the reference.
on edit: Oops, you were the OP. So, have you? 
I like big machines and have operated some cool ones but I ain't never seen nuthin' like that! So cool!
I did work a couple summers in high school almost 50 years ago as a "gandy dancer" on track repair crews. All that stuff was done manually using picks and shovels to dig out the old rotting ties and replace them with new creosote-coated wooden ties. Dirty, heavy work out in the hot summer sun with a pervasive smell of creosote. The ties they're using in this clip look like concrete, which would have probably been too heavy for manual laborers to work with all day.
One summer our crew of mostly high school and college guys lived for a while in an old sleeping car with adjoining kitchen car parked not far from the Mississippi River; the mosquitos were fierce.
A decade or two after doing all that work that railroad line was abandoned. The tracks were torn out and it was turned into a hiking trail.
Thanks for posting this. 
it was the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad, also known as The Milwaukee Road.
And the train crews would throw them big, fat pieces of the chalk they used to mark the boxcars.
Great story about your gandy dancer days!
Musta been some slow-moving trains! 
