Jim crow (tool)

A jim crow is a tool for bending rails, consisting of a U-shaped or V-shaped armature with a hefty screw rod in its axis. Deluxe models are outfitted with rollers for continuous bending.[1] Terry Pratchett uses this term in his novel Raising Steam.[2]

Illustration of a Jim crow from A Textbook on Civil Engineering — International Correspondence Schools published in 1899 by the Colliery Engineer Company.

Practice

Railway rails are quite flexible and bend easily to radii of 400m or more. The jim crow is needed to bend rails to tighter radii, especially near the ends.

gollark: Yes. It's also imperative and unpleasant.
gollark: Most of the concepts transfer between them fine.
gollark: Yeeees.
gollark: ... `innerText`, if you must.
gollark: Generally, don't set innerHTML directly? Escape user input, but you might forget, so probably use a JS framework which handles it for you. I like mithril.js, it is fairly lightweight. Svelte is also cool.

References
  1. "KALGOORLIE-PORT AUGUSTA RAILWAY". The Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 - 1950). Perth, WA: National Library of Australia. 5 January 1916. p. 4 Edition: THIRD EDITION. Retrieved 21 October 2012.
  2. Pratchett, Terry (7 November 2013). Raising Steam. Doubleday. pp. 345, 348. ISBN 978-0-85752-227-6. Retrieved 14 June 2016. raising steam jim crow terry pratchett.


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