When chasing Sunday’s WSOR M3 (Madison-Reedsburg, WI train) I saw two side-dump cars hauling what appeared to be crushed concrete. There is a ballast quarry in Rock Springs (Home of the famous “Pink Lady” ballast), and I was wondering if the concrete could be brought to the quarry to be used as ballast. What other possible uses are there? Possibly they could be brought to a cement plant to be recycled back into cement? However I am not aware of a cement plant on the line that is rail-served. Also when I was riding WSOR’s passenger specials a few weeks ago on the Reedsburg sub, as we made our way through the yard, our train passed a train that was waiting for us to pass. It was led by two Geeps and, along with some boxcars and loaded centerbeams, it was hauling hoppers hauling what appeared to be large pieces of crushed asphalt. Does anybody know where this is brought and what it is used for?
I’ve seen busted up concrete used as rip-rap to rebuild washed out embankments. Since this was in side-dump (difco) cars, that’s probably where it was going to be used.
I never thought of that, thanks! And with all the recent flooding in the midwest, that seems reasonable.
The side dumps you would have seen on the M3 were most likely going for a maintience project on the Reedsburg sub somewhere. That wasn’t concrete, but probably rock from a Quarry near Waterloo. MoW Crews have been working on getting rid of a few slow orders just south of Merrimac, and I know they dumped some ballast there a while back, and they might have been adding more. The Reedsburg sub also had a couple small problems with all the rain lately, so the idea that it could be rip-rap going to fill a small washout makes a lot of sense as well.
Cement powder can be found on the WSOR, as Lycon Cement does get cars from the WSOR at Burke (behind Eastown Mall in Madison). They only get in cement powder in covered hoppers and Sand in open hoppers though, they don’t ship the cement out by rail that I know of.
The quarry at Rock Springs doesn’t get in anything by rail. The only thing they ship is ballast going out from the quarry, and most all of this is in UP unit trains (the UP owns the quarry and contracts with Martin-Marietta to operate it). The WSOR used to get ballast from them as well, but they no longer can, and so have to get all their rock from the Waterloo pit.
What you saw while on the WSOR passenger special was a yard job (the M2, I think). They were busy working the yard most of the day putting together the Reedsburg job for that night, as well as a couple other trains, like the pick up for the Janesville to Madison train that night and others (I went down to take pictures that day, and I noticed them working with two GP38s). I don’t think the WSOR ships any asphalt by rail, so most likely what you saw was coal cars, as both the UW heater/power plant and MG&E in Madison get cars of coal in by rail from the WSOR. The chunks of coal could be mistaken as asphalt I guess.
Noah
Problem concrete absorbes water and breaks down over time. Rock does not.
Rock isn’t cheaper and if you are waging war with Ma Nature it becomes an issue of turning the cars and getting there “the fastest with the mostest” to paraphrase a Civil War era General.
In eastern Colorado and western Kansas, there is no source for two-man riprap (or larger) unless it’s concrete rubble or rock from the front range. (The cost of concrete skyrockets when you don’t have suitable sized aggregate to make concrete with)
It’s actually “Furstest with the Mostest” and still have the mostest at the end of the day. =)
Broken concrete gets busted up into tiny peices but not recycled. Concrete usually are specific mixes for different jobs and slumps and may not be suitable.
Now great big rocks like Granite are awesome for duty as breakwaters to gaurd beaches etc from erosion.
Asphalt does not really do much with trains. It is burned and mixed in a plant, dumped into a dump truck and expected to be used in a paver within a hour or two at the most. It needs to be HOT in order to work. I have memories burned into me literally from that stuff… you wont find it on a train.
Supposed you did dump a hopper full of Asphalt. by the end of the day it’s one solid cold mass. You will have to submerge the entire hopper car in flame to heat the stuff to flow out of the gates. Not exactly a good way to handle the stuff.
I have seen some difcos out of the Rio Grande with rock aboard heading north. Nice rocks too…
I don’t think it was coal because they were in chunks up to two 1/2 feet in diameter.
Asphalt can be hauled in tank cars. Actually it is handled quite often. The asphalt in the hoppers I was talking about was hardened and in large chunks.
Asphalt Concrete (Proper term…What you are really talking about)
Wonder if the “crushed concrete” in the air dumps is really local limestone?
Safety valve: You’d apparently be surprised what crushed and screened concrete winds up as.
Im certain I would be surprised. I just dumped the stuff not caring any further about it… eager to get back to filling in the hole left by the thing. Street lamp bases are like really big underground and they get chopped up by a crawler with a hydralic ram.
Mudchicken, I’m pretty sure it is limestone. I don’t know my minerals all that well, but usually the WSOR air dumps are hauling a whitish rock, and the only thing I could think of is limestone. It’s the same rock that the Milwaukee Road used for ballast, so whatever that was.
Every time I’ve seen the WSOR side dumps loaded I’m sure it wasn’t concrete. It was always large chunks of rock. It comes from a quarry on the WSOR, and they use it almost exclusively for rip rap when needed. They also get ballast from the same quarry as well, but that goes into ballast cars.
Noah
From http://www.moasphalt.org/facts/environmental/recycling.htm, shamelessly edited.
About 80 percent of all reclaimed asphalt is recycled. In fact, the hot mix asphalt industry recycles approximately twice the tonnage of asphalt pavement as the amount of recycled paper, glass, plastic and aluminum combined.
The Federal Highway Administration estimates that 91 million metric tons (100.1 million tons) of asphalt pavement are scraped or “milled” off roads during resurfacing and widening projects each year. Of that, 73 million metric tons (80.3 million tons) are reclaimed and reused as part of the nation’s roads, roadbeds, shoulders and embankments. For road surfaces, studies have determined that mixes containing 10 percent to 25 percent of reclaimed asphalt pavement have performed well in numerous states. Even higher percentages have been used successfully in lower layers. Additionally, engineers have determined that that the asphalt pavement industry can make economical use of other waste products – such as old tires, factory-reject roofing shingles, slag aggregate from steel production and sand from metal-casting foundries – to make asphalt pavement.
Recycling asphalt pavement makes both environmental and economic sense. Reclaimed asphalt pavement constitutes a “treasure trove” of pre-processed road-building materials. The use of recycled asphalt pavement has grown widely, reducing the use of virgin materials and helping to preserve landfill space. Highway agencies and taxpayers benefit because recycling stretches tax dollars, allowing more roads to be kept in better condition.
The rock from Waterloo is a crushed granite type rock. CP uses quite a bit of it, on the C & M Sub and elsewhere. The pit can also load larger rocks with the front-end loaders. They also load chips once in a while. Many times the side-dumps are loaded with regular ballast, for replacing crossing and such.
There is a limestone place in Mayville that usually loads out barn lime in gons and hoppers. They can also load riprap in side dumps, and ballast in ballast cars. Not the best stuff, but it is cheap and good enough for the 10-mph spur that serves Mayville.
The hoppers of large pieces are probably coke for Reedsburg. The outfit used to unload cars in Slinger, until they built a track in Reedsburg. The coke goes to a foundry in Reedsburg.