Today I saw a rock train in North Bh’m, all gons, no hoppers, setting on one of the mains, headed South. I didn’t get close enough to see if it was granite or limestone. We have lots of limestone quarries around here, no granite, but I seldom see rock shipped by rail from our quarries. (There are some rail shipments of rock West from quarries in northwest Alabama) Does anyone know of such rock trains thru Bh’m and there origin and destination and how they are unloaded. Gons were mixed sizes and side heights. Power was NS 5434 (SD50) in lead, HLCX 6219 (SD40-2), TFM 1421 (SD40), TFM 1302 (SD40 I think)
If it was all gons and not hoppers then all i can say is it was not a rock train. Ns owns its own quarry and shippers from that, only local emergency will it get rock from local sorce. the ns ballast trains are the orange maintance hoppers and they are also using the herzog cars.
Maybe it wasn’t a rock train, but the consist was entirely gons loaded with rock, no hoppers, no herzog. A NS herzog train just re-ballasted some of the main Bh’m to Chattanooga. Maybe this was for ballasting longer slopes to be placed by a drag line or some such machine. I haven’t seen rock in gons in a long time.