On 23/08/2010 9:31 PM,hecain@... wrote:

> My belief is that rail grinders and scrubbers were designed to perform

> different functions: while scrubbers were employed to clean the rail

> surface (and I think at least one in Melbourne also had tines for

> scraping out the grooves of the rails), grinders were for bringing the

> roughness left by welding down to a true surface.


Hi Hal,

Agreed - plus the other thing that a grinder could do is to re-profile
the rail - not just scrub the surface.

The grinders also had narrow grinding wheels which cut into the groove -
and (at least in the case of the Woods-Gilbert design) cut down the
height of the flange to match the running surface.

Here's a pic of Melbourne's Austral-Otis No 1 when new - from an MMTB
annual report.
http://tdu.to/MMTB_report_RailGrinder.jpg

No 1 is preserved by TMSV.

To answer Noel's question - at least Mr Woods was a 'resident of Princes
Hill' (ie Carlton) so it was a Melbourne design.

Austral Otis was also a Melbourne company who built all sorts of
machinery - they took on the Austral-Otis name after getting the local
rights for the Otis elevator designs during the Melbourne property boom
of the 1880s.

Mal Rowe - who will take a look at No 1 at Bylands this Saturday