UPRR Ballast Train

steve24944 (4-2):

A few years back there were a couple of surprise bad Powder River Basin derailments in short order that the NTSB attributed to coal dust buildup on and in the ballast of the tracks. So, the PRB railroads cleaned their ballast.

On the line in question, a branch southeast of Grand Junction, that line may (“may”) now have ballast buildup on it, even as little coal trains there is on that branch. While I am uncertain as to exactly what the questioned train is, I would say a ballast cleaning train would be a good bet.

Take care,

K.P.

https://www.plassertheurer.com/en/machines-systems/ballast-bed-cleaning-rm-80-uhr-n.html

Ballast Cleaning

Thanks for posting that. Now I see how ballast cleaning works.

Steve

Went to Delta today. 11:30 the full train was still there. Left town at 2:30 and the 2 Locomotives were gone, but the rest of the train was still sitting there.

Steve

We had CSX doing ballast cleaning here a couple weeks ago. it was a contract job by Loram. The big difference from the machines shown here was it had 2 rotating scoups on each side and only cleaned ballast located from under rail to ouside of ballast. No additional ballast carried however some new had been distributed prior to cleaning. A

As far as known tamper has not resurfaced the section yet.

What you observed was a ‘shoulder ballast cleaner’. It only cleans the ballast shoulder at the ends of the ties. Because the ballast under the ties is not disturbed, no tamping is required for the track to maintain its line. Cleaning the ballast shoulder promotes drainage of water away from the ballast that keeps the track in line.

Didn’t UP and BNSF have an argument over whom was supposed to clean the ballast under the Powder River Basin trackage of coal dust? After it rained heavily and the years and years of accumulated coal dust in the ballast caused issues with the track alignment, causing them to issue slow orders all over the place.

That is what we thought at first but it had an arm that extended under the cross ties to drag out ballast from the rail to the end of the ties. We could see the cleaned ballast fall between the ties and also along the shoulders. A small rotating broom followed after the ballast droppped to trim the ballast.

If ballast under the track is disturbed there will be a 10 MPH slow order on the track until a specified amount of tonnage passes over the track. The slow order may be raised to 25 MPH if MofW takes no exceptions to the track. The speed will reamain at 25 MPH for a specified number of days before being raised to track speed. Not being MofW I am not sure of the amount of tonnage and the number of days the slow orders are to remain in effect.

Our speed progressions are 15, 30, 45, 60 than normal. (Our maximum speed is 70, which is mostly intermodal and autoracks.)

There have been a time or two when on a loaded coal or grain train, we were purposely crossed over to help meet the tonnage requirement.

Jeff