I was in Isanti, MN this morning doing my usual Sat. routine, and I saw the BNSF is going to be doing some track maintenance there on the Hinckley Sub. Brand new ties have been dropped and from the looks of the spray paint on the rail, some rail will be replaced.
Two BNSF Geeps (GP-40s I think - one in the pumpkin scheme and the other in the white-face & green BN livery) lead 12 old BN open-top hopper cars onto the siding in Isanti (they were there when I arrived). There was what appeared to be a front-end loader inside one of the hoppers, and the operator was there, working to fold-in the braces on either side of the loader’s scoop so he could lower it. I was hoping that the crew was going to move the loader from one car to another as I’d love to see how that machine would extract itself from the bottom of that car. Now that’s something I’d have stayed there all morning to watch, but the crew left (the two engines went up to Cambridge I believe, picked-up two more Geeps and ran light back to Northtown - saw them heading south after breakfast).
The hoppers hadn’t been converted into ballast cars, i.e. they didn’t have the side-dispersing chutes. They were the ordinary-type hoppers used to carry coal, stone, etc. I don’t think the hoppers were being used to carry the new ties as that would seem to be an inefficient way to deliver them (normally they’re carried in gondolas or flat cars), but I didn’t get close enough to ask and I didn’t want to climb up and look inside.
Would the railroad be using this type of arrangement to deliver ballast? Or would they indeed be dispensing ties? The front-end loader must’ve had a swiveling boom. I’ve seen excavators that crawl along the tops of hoppers for unloading coal (that’d be a great model railroad scene that’s on my list), but I’ve never seen a front-end loader inside the hopper!
Ideas?
I saw something of the same a week ago or so on the NS here in Ohio. The difference was that the cars were being pulled by a heavy duty , semi type, truck on hi rails, It must have had couplers, which was kind of interesting.
CSX MoW in Mi uses these too…ive been called on a few work trains to run these around…lil more boring then a rail train droppin ribbon rail
That’s precisely what I saw (even though I only saw a small portion of the backhoe this morning). That video was enthralling - the scene of that BNSF work train creeping down the tracks with those cartoppers swinging their booms along the side picking up metal scrap looked almost like something from H.G. Wells! Watching how that machine mounts itself (can I say that on the forum?) onto the cars made me replay it several times - man did that look incredible. Thanks!
Holy Smokes!
I went to Herzog’s website. Are they poised to rule the railroad world? It seems like they can deliver everything.
Herzog… as Larry Glick used to say, “What’s the story behind the story?”
Meanwhile… salutes to Whitey Herzog the hapless ballplayer and great team builder. If I could vote I’d send you to the Hall. Hope you are still kicking and doing your wonderful stuff.
RIXFLIX
…Just a few weeks ago Herzog was doing some similar work on the north side of Muncie on the New Castle line of NS, and it was unloading ties. It was the type that operated on crawler tracks, and yes…up on top of the gondolas, AND, it fell off and on to the 2nd track at that location. Believe the operator was not seriously hurt.
One can check back a few weeks on here and check the posts on it.
It was a smaller machine than the one M C listed above and as I mentioned was supported on crawler tracks and it did rotate on it’s base. But it ended up on the ground. {ROW}. I’d say the machine was still useable. That working up on top of those gondolas has always been an operation of interest to me since I first saw the operation several years ago here in Muncie on the Frankfort Line of NS.