Portable Track
Sometimes rail tracks are designed to be portable and moved from one place to another as required. During construction of the Panama Canal, tracks were moved around excavation works. These tracks were 5 ft (1,524 mm) and the rolling stock full size. Portable tracks have often been used in open pit mines.
Cane railways often had permanent tracks for the main lines, with portable tracks serving the canefields themselves. These tracks were narrow gauge (for example, 2 ft (610 mm)) and the portable track came in straights, curves and turnouts rather like on a model railway.
Decauville was a source of many portable light rail tracks, also used for military purposes.
The permanent way is so called because temporary way tracks were often used in the construction of that permanent way.
Read more about this topic: Track (rail Transport)
Famous quotes containing the words portable and/or track:
““Wotever is, is right, as the young nobleman sveetly remarked wen they put him down in the pension list ‘cos his mother’s uncle’s vife’s grandfather vunce lit the king’s pipe vith a portable tinder-box.””
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“What is the use of going right over the old track again? There is an adder in the path which your own feet have worn. You must make tracks into the Unknown.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)