QUOTE (Robert Stokes @ 6 Nov 2007, 22:44)
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>By the word 'shoulder' I did not mean the ballast falling at the ends of the sleepers to the slightly lower level of the land nearby. What I saw yesterday was that at the ends of the sleepers the ballast rose by a few inches to make a definite hump, distinctly above sleeper level, before falling again (by more than it rose) to the level of the land nearby. It is this hump that I meant by 'shoulder'. I have re-read your answer and I don't think that it addressses this point. Do they have these humps either side of the sleepers on Australian railways?
Cheers, Robert.
*** Hi Robert. Yes, the bump at the shoulder different to the shoulder

. Re the difference between railways I think they all use the same sort of gear these days so the results look pretty well the same!
The "Bump" you saw is not usually there with totally relaid track but is there with maintained track quite often. ie, the shoulder normally doesn't have it but these bumps do exist sometimes on newly maintained areas.
What happens - sort of - is that when servicing and reballasting/ realigning or re-tamping track to restore it, without totaly lift and replace happening, more ballasting is just laid on top and the job completed by a machine which slightly lifts the existing track and tamps and packs the new ballast which is pushed directly under the old track. It does this in a continuous movement as it moves along and if there is excess ballast this will be heaped up a little at the sides as it is in excess of needs as "suspensiion and drainage"
(happy to stand corrected on this procedure - thats how it looks to me anyway)
In days gone by it may have been manually removed immediately but time is money now and closures really disrupt things a lot with the rail system under pressure so in busier places it will usually be left as you see it as to recover it and resore the "flat" profile to the edges costs a lot of time.
In time if someone doesn't make a decision to move it during quiet times will mostly eventually settle or disappear anyway as vibration moves and spreads it, so it falls into the "cess" making the "shoulder" area less tidy than that of new track.
Hope this is closer to your question.
kind regards
Richard