Need to know the color of the ballast used by the RIRR. I’m helping a fellow modeler and I’ve been assigned to do the ballast. I model the SP and haven’t a clue what stone was used by the RI. Any assistance would be greatly apprecialted.
Noah Cash
klamath rails model rr club
A darn difficult question to answer. For example the only part of the RI that I am familiar with is in Illinois and, to some extent, Iowa. Obviously it extended far beyond that. Many railroads used local sources for their ballast which is why, for example, knowing what ballast the Milwaukee Road used in Madison WI does not tell you much about what they used in Montana. The same I expect is true for the Rock Island in Joliet IL versus Texas or New Mexico.
At least in Bureau Jct IL I remember seeing ballast that was whiteish in shade, not pure white like limestone but the white that some kinds of slag gets, and the rocks were irregular in size. Closer to Chicago it seemed like a fair amount of cinders were mixed in, darkish gray. Closer to the Mississippi the ballast sometimes looked like rounded pebbles. But this could well be very localized. And most of what I saw was at least a year or two after the Rock shut down. In LaSalle/Peru Illinois, for example, I would have said that the Rock used no ballast at all just dirt and weeds!
This website has some color RI photos and it may be possible to glean some ideas from them. The Morning Sun RI books might give even more ideas.
http://www.jerryapp.com/arcv_r5.html
Dave Nelson
The Rock Island was a sprawling system with more than 1,000 ballast sources over the years and more than 20-plus operative at any one time. Even today’s Class 1s with very large budgets that affords them ability to buy high-quality ballast, will source from as many as 20 different locations scattered across their territory, producing ballast that is every color from white to grey to pink to dark reddish brown to brown. Much of the Rock Island was ballasted with “local material,” which was whatever the embankment itself consisted of, or spoil from the nearest cut, or with local pit-run gravel. To answer the question, a narrow location and a narrow time period is an essential starting point.
RWM
They got a lot of Rock from a quarry on the Milan branch. IAIS still gets it today from the same place.
Now RWM says it correctly. We need a time frame. I remember the Rocks ballast going to heck in a hurry. Out in Orion where I grew up it was cinders and rock and rotten ties.That was the late 70’s.
Thats the Rock I remember. You might want to try pictures on the RITS list, good luck!