I went by the Lane quarry in Westfield MA today and saw a two track string of these hopper cars that at a glance did not seem very well used yet. Did not have a camera but will swing by tomorrow. All I have seen in the past years were Conrail and then CSX open hopper cars but there were probably other names that I did not see.
Herzog is a new one to me. You might be interested in this link I found from A Google search for
The location at the quarry is probably a good clue–they were probably being loaded with ballast. They are in fact hoppers, but did they look a lot like old steel coal gons? That’s their origin.
I have lived a few miles from the quarry all my life and my dad use to haul trap rock out of the quarry many years ago. They have a long series of belts moving rock to the loading area, Then a huge front end loader needs, I think, two buckets to fill the hopper cars.
I use to have a picture og my Dad standing inside one of the bucket loader tire rims since he knew a supervisor at the site.
The cars are on an incline and are slowly allowed to roll down the incline for loading, I assume. The area is about fifteen feet above the highway which is along side the mainline but I cannot get a clear view to see if they use any kind of equipment to move the cars. The police are there quickly if anyone climbs up the embankment nearby and the area is right across from a new CSX signal.
Bigger hint is that the bulk of herzog’s ballast hopper fleet are remote control variable discharge and about half of those can be automatically programmed to discharge by GPS location. The cars could be working on major surfacing/ tie gang projects just about anywhere on any railroad.
The Class 1’s ballast car fleets are undersized and the air dump fleets are a mess (way to few and the post merger frenzy to rationalize air dumps et al was not a good move.) Herzog’s fleet grew out of multiple transit projects. St. Joseph, MO gets interesting whenever all that stuff goes home.
Do those hopper cars have solar panels on them - they usually provide power to control (only) the dumping function, which itself is powered by air.
“Trap rock” is another clue - it’s about ideal for railroad ballast, and high-strength concrete. But few others want it because it’s so hard = expensive to crush, and they don’t need that strength for road stone and other low-grade uses.
Link to photo of HZGX 7001 - “HERZOG - Plus Train - Programmable Linear Unloading System - high speed computerized ballast car sytem” per the note, as mentioned by mudchicken above:
One Herzog train cycles in and out of the Dresser trap rock quarry here in Dresser, WI. The motive power varies from CP to CN to others. Each car has a solar panel to power the remote control receiver for dumping. Each car has a label on the side with its remote control number so the operator can dump when in position. The trap rock here is the hardest basalt in North America and really the best ballast around. In addition to the Herzog train we have 3 CP trains that cycle in and out of the quarry. This time of year they each make about one visit to the quarry each week. That is the reason that the CN (ex WC ex SOO) Dresser subdivision exists. The railroad has tried to market this trap rock to other railroads but most of it is used in the Upper Midwest.
The only challenge with these trains is that they run at any time and often we have to take the siding to let them by when running the scheduled scenic trains at Osceola. Most of our passengers understand and are interested to see a real train pass by. It does give our crews experience in working with other trains in Track Authority Territory.
When we were coming down from Montréal last year, I noticed several cars with new brown paint and the reporting mark HZGX at one point above Schenectady. They were entirely new to me, and I posted a question about them on the General Discussion Forum. Nobody answered me, but I at last know who HGZX is, and what it does.
All the herzog trains I used to pull out of a quarry (and it was quite a few) never had air hoses for dumping functions. Instead - it had an electrical connection. They had the nickname of “star wars trains” for their GPS-guided dumping system.
CSX is currently operating a number of Herzog equipped ballast trains on their system. These trains have been equipped with GPS programmed dumping capability. With track time being at a premium on all Main Line routes, a ballast train that can deposit it’s contents accurately at a continuous 10 to 15 MPH along with the flow of other regular traffic is a significant real life capacity booster. These trains are able to correctly dump their contents in a hour or less in the right spots along the right of way, with the previous methods getting that amount of ballast dumped could take upwards of a entire week, based upon track time and crew availability (crew is both T&E as well as MofW).
On one territory that I am familiar with, one Herzog train has been dumping it’s 54 car contents every night and returing to the quarry to be loaded during the day. Such production and turn-around would have been unheard of without the use of this equipment.
Sometime ago, I saw the Herzog hoppers with the solar cells on them and was quite surprised. I hit the 'Net and did a search and found quite a lot of info about this feature. Technology is really rolling along
I remember not to many years ago, without the 'Net, it would take me quite a lot of time to find info like this.