…here’s something I restored from a box of old color slides I shot when I was a teenager back in 1972, found the box in my stepmother’s basement (hundreds more where these came from, but they’re in lousy condition[:(]…).
I’m putting them in as links for the “bandwidth challenged” members.
MoW train depositing ballast at PointOfRocks, MD, 1972
B&O GP7 6402 on a MoW train, PointOfRocks, MD, 1972
[bow][bow][bow][bow][bow]
MORE! MORE! MORE! PLEASE!
It looks like the ties have been busted out and then heaped… if you look in front of the loco in the 2nd pic it looks like they’ve been replacing just some ties not all… the ballast is very limited around a couple of tie ends… this is excellent detail for track “weathering”… this break in the ballast occurs ahead of the ties being pulled out and after until the ballast is replaced. Where there is a lot of work to be done in a length a “Slow"order” will be put on several days ahead and the ballast cleaned out around all the ties to be changed. The ties may be pulled by hand or machine and new ones put in. If the ties have been damaged by water it will usually mean that the ballast around them has been staturated or very poor/dirty so new ballast will be dropped and worked in. The bad ballast has probably already been removed from heaps before the ties have been pulled … if it wasn’t dumped down the bank… leaves spoil lines.
A tie cut in half is much easier to remove than a whole one… I think it was much more common in the USA than here… partly because a machine would cut the tie… you don’t want to cut one by hand… not even with a chain saw… and definitely NOT while it is in place in the track with ballast to be hit and thrown around.
THANKS FOR THE PICS![:D][:D] RESCUE MORE PLEASE!
These are rare and even damaged ones give us massively useful information.
[:D][:D][:D][:D][:D]
Good stuff, Ken.
I’ve debated splicing together a MOW train for my empire while I am in construction purgatory here. Those pics may just push me over the edge to actually do it.
Great pictures Ken, hope we get to see more.
Stan.
[bow]
I like anything MOW.
Not just MOW, got any more of those geeps?
Wow… I almost forgot I had even posted this thread, last time I looked yesterday it was off the front page with no replies. At any rate, I’m glad you guys liked them, and thanx for the kind feedback![:)]
David, thanx for the behind-the-scenes narrative on tie removal. I guess that could really be dangerous work. I won’t get near a chain saw to begin with, but cutting a tie among jagged rocks…![:O]
Mark, I bet you’ve got 80% of the ingredients for that train already - a loco, 3 gons and a caboose - all you need is a crane. It’s still 2 weeks before Christmas, add it to your wish list[;)]
Matt (trainboy), I’ve got lotsa Geep pictures among those slides (B&O, C&O, WM). I just need to find a ‘homegrown’ way to make digital thumbnails of all of them, then I can maybe post those ‘index’ sheets and let people choose which ones they want to see full sized, then I’ll enlarge those.
Stan and “Weather-Man” Matt: Hello, good to see ya!
I’m up for a few more shots!
B&O is the way to go.
