Today I saw a BNSF ballast car train. Each car had what appeared to be a solar panel on the side. What is this for?
Some of the cars had blades underneath the car. Are these to help spread the ballast as it is dumped?
The cars these days usually have some electronics involved - GPS among other things.
Rather than run power through the train, each car has a battery and the solar panel keeps it charged.
Blades, most likely.
Many years ago I saw a C&O crew place a tie in front of the lead wheel of the rear truck of a ballast hopper. The tie was big enough that the wheel pushed it rather than ran over it, and the tie spread the ballast.
Herzog, Georgetown and other companies involved in helping railroads maintain their rights of way have developed GPS actuated ballast trains that can distribute ballast where the carriers desire it be place while the entire train is moving 10 to 12 MPH. A 65 car ballast train can distribute is entire load on the right of way in less than an hour. Track time is at a premium for MofW work. Old methods of dumping ballast could take several days to distribute 65 cars of ballast in the desired locations.
These panels are probably just to provide power for the gates when they’re unloaded by the crew (from a safe distance, via a push-button control).
Great video! Thanks.
Most of the ballast rock in ths area seems to be delivered by ‘contractor’ equipment.
There are the Gergetown trains that are ‘self-unloading’[ ability to stock-pile ;arge quanties adjacent to ROW, Ballast rains equipped with solar powered unloading systems, on bottom dumping hopper car [sode discharge].
There seems to be a ‘normal’ Ballast train that unloads ‘manually’(?). The strange part, where that train is concerned; the cars on that train, are those regular discharge, bottom dumping hopper cars; all seem to be owned by UPRR,[several are painted in theMOW Green that UPRR uses]. They bear no BNSF reporting marks; No idea where it originates or returns to(?). Have seen it empty, and loaded, going in either direction… The aapparent closest, ballast pit was down at Stringtown,OK.{ adjacent to the former KATY Line, now UPRR (?).
In watching the tie work on the CSX Toledo Sub through Deshler, I noticed that the ballast was dropped outside the gauge. A ballast regulator then brought the rock into the gauge and the tamper did its work.
The ballast regulator then returned and trimmed the rock down to the top of the ties.
Almost seems like two functions going on here. In the BNSF video it seems like they are just adding ballast to the roadbed. In your description above maybe they are both adding ballast and raising the rail head?
I think it was more a balancing of what was displaced in the tie replacement process with some replacement. The view on the cam is pretty limited, but does include the diamonds (which still aren’t exactly as smooth as they should be) and a couple of crossings. Raising the level of the track wouldn’t be desireable.
Does anybody know how the dumping flow of hoppers in the ballast train is controled? Specifically, what happens when the lead hopper empties and a trailing hopper needs to come on-stream?
The GPS ballast trains are programmed by the operators (Herzog etc.) after having made a hi-rail run over the territory accompanied by the carriers Roadmaster (aka. Track Supervisor) for the territory to identify where and how much ballast is to be dumped. Dumping rates for each gate opening position are known as well as the capacity of the car - simple mathmatics then applies to when a car will become empty and the next car needs to start dumping. Road Crossings and switches are programmed into the dumping.
On CSX when I was working a GPS ballast train that was actively dumping on a track segment was required to be followed by MofW personnel in a hi-rail vehicle to inspect and clean any ballast that may have been dumped in switches, road crossings and anywhere else it was not intended as mistakes and overruns do happen.
In the current fleets of some, there is a small strain gage that senses the change in weight and hydraulically (via the actuators) closes the gates (doors) … it’s then up to the ballast regulator to take care of the gaps, switches and (sometimes) road crossings.
One of the functions of the blade (or old manual method crosstie wedged against the trailing truck lead wheel) is to keep the car from derailing itself if the train stops for some reason and you cannot close the gates fast enough on the MK/Miner doors (and god forbid there are still the old style chain & crank gates out there somewhere - just a slight improvement over chaining open a conventional coal hopper (once these open, you can’t close them until all the ballast has come out of the car). The ballast piles up over the rail and the now lighter cars derail. (part of the reason then when dumping ballast manually it was a front to the rear of the movement operation)
That is what is happening out side my home. Only the regulator and tampert have not come by yet. The amount dumped out side the rail almost appears to be enough to increase the widths of the ballast shoulders.
Increasing the width of ballast shoulders aids in resisting ‘sun kinks’ when temperatures rise and rail expands.
Could be enough for a skinlift for a CAT-09 in the neighborhood as well (instead of a full blown neighborhood surfacing gang)
Unlikely BNSF is maintaining anything beyond a six inch ballast shoulder. Anything beyond that is a waste in their line of thinking. Could it be the shoulders were too light and you were seeing the ends of the ties instead of just the top inch or so?
If you check out the Deshler PTZ cam, you can see two small berms of what appears to be excess stone.
Conveniently windrowed by Mr. Ballast Regulator for future use as the ballast under the crossing frogs turns to dust under all the pounding. Wonder if they ever dug out that mudhole and did an asphalt underlayment + geotextiles there to minimize future mudmaking?
That is the one thing we don’t comprehend - ballast against ties and other track components is beaten into dust with the passage of each car on each train from the wave action of every passing wheel
It’s not ballast against ties; it’s ballast against ballast, agitated by ties and shock. The stones in the first layer against the tie ‘key’ into it, and effectively become so many little ‘hand axes’ against the second layer out and down… which then in turn triturates the one under…
Same as how stones in a rubber tumbler come out shiny when you leave them for a while.
In the case of Deshler, that mudhole (the Great Black Swamp) apparently extends for miles…
They did dig out under the diamonds when they replaced them a couple of years ago. There’s still bounce there. A timelapse video of the replacement is available on YouTube. I think they just dropped in new ballast…