Hi FOlks, I work as a locomotive engineer and am always fascinated when I see tow very specific kinds of work done on the railroad. The first is called ballast cleaning. There is a nationally recognized company, Loram and they specialize in leaning all the dirt, mud and debris from underneath railroad tracks. The highly specialized equipment is fascinating and dirty!! Their site is www.loram.com.
The other project is called "rail grinding". A large specialized machine that looks like a train travels the tracks at low speeds grinding and resurfacing the rails on a railroad track.. It is VERY dirty, noisy and at night the arcing and sparking is very dramatic. It is very interesdting to watch. I feel for the guys that do this job becaise they look absolutely filthy by the end of the day. The industry leader is a company called Speno. My search couldn't find a home page for them but there is plenty of infoo on the net about the process.

Hope you can check this out!! PS your segment on railroad track work while informative is was nowhere near as rough, tough and dirty as it actually gets out on a real railroad vs the training academy. I don't do this kind of work as I am an engineer that travels the tracks and observes these folks doing a thankless and very dirty job.

The entire family really enjoys your show, it is great to be able to sit down as a family of five and watch the show together. We all have our favorite "Mike Moments". God Bless him, I would not have picked up those Lake Erie Water Snakes.

Loco 101