Hi, it’s been a while since I’ve posted on here, but I have a good question that some of you may be able to answer. I’ve noticed that Conrail before June 1, 1999 used a very dark/grayish color of ballast that is very heavy. NS and CSX before acquiring Conrail use a light/medium gray color ballast that doesn’t seem to be as heavy as Conrail ballast. Recently, I went to Effingham, IL and picked up a couple rocks off the tracks there that are now owned by CSX but used to be Conrail. Then, I looked at a sample of CSX ballast at Flora, IL which used to be the B&O St. Louis line. The ballast there is a lot like NS’s ballast through Fairfield. It is very light gray and isn’t anything like CSX/CR’s ballast at Effingham. My question is why does CSX and NS continue to use the dark gray ballast on former Conrail routes? Why don’t they use the lighter gray ballast on all track including ex CR?
Railroads usually get their ballast from the nearest and cheapest source they can find, so it will usually be from a quarry or gravel pit that is within 100 miles or less.
Gravel should not ever be equated with ballast.
(1) It’s round
(2) It’s rarely hard
(3) Usually very dirty
During the 1960s, I recall that the Milwaukee used gravel for ballast on the PCE line west of Minneapolis. It was all round stones with fines. I don’t know where it came from or the composition, but a lot of the stones were cream color or reddish brown. Apparently at some point, they either gave up or lost the fight to the weeds. The track looked like two gleaming strips of steel running through an alfalpha field. One conductor called it the “lawn.” He told me they had to run fast enough to mow the lawn.
A good bit of the ballast used on the old B&A main line and the NYC water level routes (both now CSX, having been Conrail) is dark, angular, and heavy, and comes from a large, rail-served quarry in Westfield, Massachusetts. The beauty of the stuff is that while initial compaction is a bit of a bore, once packed it will hold forever and being very hard it doesn’t break down and make fines.
Since I was working on the ground anyhow, I had the chance to take a closer look at our ballast last weekend - mostly darker gray, but all the newer stuff is light colored. I’d imagine the darker stuff dates to the days of NYC and PC (I don’t think CR ever ran that line). I found some cinders, too, which may well have been used at one point or another.
Picked up a cinder from the roadbed near the station - a young lady who was with a group taking a look at our SW1 was thrilled to receive it. Real railroad cinders…
Steel mill slag to ballast to (degrades to) cinders…
She can keep the cinders, gimme the SW-1