Yard Ballast

Yep, I saw a drone view of it on YouTube.

I have a good pic of a Chessie yard to shot for. Why are there large mounds of sand all over. I know what the sand is for but i don’t know what drives the random large piles. Would think pulling a few cars in a yard is not a traction issue.

Which yard are you refering to?

Sand sometimes leaks out of covered hoppers.

It gets spilled around engine terminals when sanding engines.

Leaving the sanders on an engine run when stopped will make a pile.

Mark Vinski

Grafton, WV

There is (or maybe was) a lot of fracing sand moving through there. Probably leaky covered hoppers leaving piles of sand. You can see the path that a leaking car took through the yard by following the trail left on the track. A small pile will be left everywhere the car stops.

Some times the hopper doors are left open and if there is some sand left in the cars it falls out when the cars are switched in the yard.

Mark

I am going for pre frac mid 1970s. Some good references for me at http://towns-and-nature.blogspot.com/2017/05/grafton-wv-b-coaling-facilities-and.html

The piles of sand around the coaling tower are from the locomotive sanders. The sanders are usually tested during a locomotive inspection. Also if the air brakes go into emergency all the sanders on the locomotives involved will turn on. This can happen when buiding an engine consist if the air valves are not handled carefully.

Interesting, thanks for info.

The current December issue of Model Railroad Hobbyist has a terrific article on creating your own ballast…

https://online.fliphtml5.com/buups/kcwx/index.html#p=73

Ahh, Joe Fugate strikes again! Everything that Joe does is highly interesting to model railroaders. Great article, thanks for posting the link.

Rich

Thanks, I did catch that, interesting and timely, just sayin’. For the heck of it I messed around with WS fine ballast since I have a bunch. I placed some parchment paper on concrete floor, spread out some WS ballast and rolled, crushed it using a marble roller. Regardless of what it is made of, the ballast crushed down a little more to look promising for an ultra fine effect. The R&D looked good so will try a full blown demo in the future.