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Caption: Well, diamonds are not forever, they wear out. The summer of 2018 saw the welders out frequently to fill in chips and keep the old diamond in running order. The new diamond here, was almost finished, a few clips and bolts left to install. Still, it will be another month before the crews arrive to pick it up and move it to the new location at East Edmonton.
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What a great photo. It’s sometimes easy to overlook the many facets of railroading and concentrate on motive power. These “prefab” diamonds & switches are interesting. Replacement diamonds have been around longer than prefab switches in my experience. The new diamonds like this one have the insulated joint for the “dead spot” clearly marked and the rails beyond those joints will be welded to the rails beyond. If I recall the old replacement diamonds didn’t include rail beyond the insulated joints because they were bolted to those rails at the insulated joint.
I do recall slow orders on sharp angled crossings like CP crossing of CN (now Via)west of Chatham ON. and in some cases it wasn’t chunks out of the points, but the entire diamond slightly shifting slightly out of alignment. You could actually see the “zig zag” in front of the engine.