Hi everyone,
I am planning on modeling a small rock quarry on my new layout. However, I am not sure how rocks leave the quarry. What I mean by that is, do quarries only provide one size and type of rock? Or can customers request a certain size, shape i.e. block vs stones? Is it geologically possible to have multiple types of stone quarried in the same place? I realize that the earth, or what is in it, is not uniform so there is probably not going to be a concrete answer to my questions, but any information you can provide would be a big help. BTW I am modeling the midwest, Wisconsin to be exact, if it makes a difference.
Thanks,
Sean
there is a large limestone quarry near me and they run all the stone through a crusher and seperator then store the different grades and sizes in seperate giant piles. although they no longer ship by rail, they load trucks directly from the piles with large front end loader machines. truck pulls up beside the pile and the operator loads the rock inito it.
rail operations would not doubt use the same or similar procedure with elevators or conveyors and perhaps the same machines used to load out trucks.
there was a giant quarry on the south side of chicago right next to I-80. if you can locate it on bing maps bird's eye view. you can probably see what you want to know. there was a big one just north of joliet too, i think it was on hwy 53.
grizlump
I think it would be very unusual for a quarry, especially a small quarry, to mine two different types of rock.
Some quarries only produce cut rock (blocks) and other produce only crushed rock.
Crushed rock does come in different sizes most would screen the rock and sell different grades.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Sean,
First you need to decide if this is a gravel quarry or if it is mining 'cut' stone like granite blocks. A good Wisconsin example is the ballast quarry at Rock Springs that provides the 'Pink Lady' ballast used on the ex-C&NW lines. Something like this would have a crusher and rail loadout to fill hopper cars.
If mining large cut stone like the granite quarries around St Cloud & Mankato, MN: then there is a large 'jib' loadout that places the blocks on rail cars. I still see some blocks shipped by rail, but many times the wire cutter is on-site and the blocks are cut into slabs that are shipped by truck to local momument companies. Many years ago the 'rainbow' quarry at Morton shipped blocks via rail to the Cold Stone Quarry for cutting. The Rainbow quarry was on the M&StL and the Cold Spring Granite was on the GN.
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
I too, am interested in this topic.
Specifically the crushers/sorters. I have looked for a kit (found none) & decided to scratch build one, but do not have any info or Pix of crushers/sorters. I want to model two of them for a 'timeline interchangable' layout, 30-40's era & modern.
I lived a 1/4 mile from a sand quarry in childhood, they dragline dreadged it then & barge suck it now. In college I saw that MASSIVE I-80 Limestone quarry on (whiplash) both sides of the HWY (like the BB cartoon) in IL mentioned previously.
From my young exploriation [of the SAND Quarry] (before I knew I would want to know what I was looking at) I saw a semi trailer sized box clad with angle iron, with 2-3 conveyors exiting it. One had stone & rock chute piling up rock that was larger than say 1/4" to 1/2"+ or so, into piles that were then moved by end loader elsewhere. Another feeding a large elevator conveyor that piled the refined sand to the 'Great Piles' that were endloaded & trucked to their destination. Under the conveyor there was an ultra-fine pile of dust like stuff that I eagerly collected for the toys (I was pre-teen then). The possible 3rd conveyor (different crews & times) may have been a mid-sized aggregrate the 1/4' -1" for concrete mixing, again endloaded out. All the crusher/seperator conveyors were short 20' -40' or so, & if needed a larger independant one was added as a booster for larger piles.
Honestly, I wish I could go back in time & unleash the Nikon on it, so I could reproduce it in 1/87 scale for my layout as well. That was great info, when I didn't know any better..
To your post, perhaps there are different crusher/sorters that could seperate the sizes of crushed stone for a specific purpose, as our sand quarry did/does. Usually (in my NE IA area), all the stone is limestone in a single quarry, so it is a crush & sort operation, not a composition sorting op. (From what I can observe).
I would love to see some pix of crusher/sorters to put with this recollection, & help with the groups building options. I was shocked when I could not find any applicable kits of just a crusher or sorter.
I don't know if this will help, but I hope it will. Feel free to ask more, but I pretty much said what I can recall.
Just a couple of general points...
1. Quarrying (and mining) are broadly era specific. A simple example is that at one time most of a quarries output might go by rail except for a tiny amount for local use. More recently everything might be trucked out with some specific exceptions like limestone for the steel industry.
2. You wouldn't usually get two completely different products (e.g. salt and granite) from one quarry but you could get two or more different variants of the same thing from one place. You might, for example get blocks, aggregate and dust from one quarry. This would tend to depend on product demand and the nature of the rock. (A quarry producing blocks will not just shut down if the demand drops but is likely to switch to crushed stone... unless the block value is very high when demanded e.g. marble). The rock might vary (possibly either side of a fault line through the quarry.
3. A block quarry will tend to drill and/or saw the blocks out of a face with little or no use of explosive... and any explosive will be "soft" to crack the block away with minimum damage.
4. An aggregate quarry will usually blast any solid rock (as distinct from say draglining a sand or gravel). The thing with this is that times change. Older technology tended to blow great chunks out any-old-how and then smash them up (hard labour for penal establishments). More recent quarrying tends to blast the rock to specific sizes to order - they can even work on the % of dust produced.
5. Old style blasting produced random chunks that may or may not have to be further broken before being shipped to some form of crushing machine. What went into the machine varied in size from maximum acceptable to powder. What was in the tub/skip/bucket got tipped in and crushed. This produced masses of dust. In a lot of cases dust was waste product or (because so much got produced) low value. It tended to cover most of a quarry and large parts of the surrounding area in dry weather and coat everything in rock coloured slurry in the wet.
If that wasn't enough old style blasted rock tended to end up with all the edges knocked off. This was because of being tipped, rolled, thumped about in the crusher, dropped out the bottom, scooped up, moved, dropped and so on. All the many actions acted in the same way as a gemstone polisher to smooth the rock. Both this and the time involved had an effect of dulling the colour of the rock. The dulling was, of course, increased by the coating of dust that tended to be left on the rock.
When moved and dry the rock could shake off its coating of dust. This applied to train loads of crushed rock... they could leave a trail of dust of varying thickness. If you were trackside and saw a rock train coming you protected your eyes and breathing.
6. Sticking with the older stuff for the moment.
Rock of many sizes tipped into the crusher could be broken to selected maximum sizes by controlling what was allowed to fall out the bottom. This only stopped the big stuff dropping out until it was small enough though. Everything under size got through (or clogged up the machine).
If a bulk of a specific size was wanted the size and smaller would then be put (possibly directly) onto a line of big sieves. These usually sloped downwards by a designed amount and were vibrated, shaken or rocked to both shift the rock along and sort it. This was called screening. The first screen was usually the largest (it got the most rock on it) but had the smallest holes for all the little stuff to drop through. Succesive screens got larger holes until the end of the line where anything still too big to drop through got dumped out the end... possibly to go back to the crusher.
8. Crushers could and still can be stamping machines (big hammers), rotary, or crushing wheels. It depends on what is going in and what they want out the far end. Some machines have great munchers that look like bevel gears with nasty big teeth on them... the sort of thing the baddy drops into in movies.
9. Modern explosive technology means that specific mixes can be designed for specific rocks right down to individual quarry characteristics and the principle size of rock required. When the charge is blown the rock will lift out and drop in a predictable zone already shattered to the size required. Very little "cleaning" of over or under sized material is needed.
The result is a lot less dust, shifting about and/or reworking and the rock is both brght and sharp(er) edged. It is commonly unneccessary to screen modern shattered rock. I'm using the word "shattered" to distinguish it from "blasted" - and then worked.
10 As far as I have seen...
Old quarries drilled into the rock face from the front (more-or less horizontally). This was done by hand before suitable machines were developed that could both do the job and get into position. This also applied to cutting rail track routes through rock... as p[er the SP heading east. The bores were not that deep and the blasting took off a slice of the face.
Modern quarries usually bore from the top and will drill several lines of charge holes parralel to the face. These bore holes can be at least a hundred feet deep (I haven't actually measured one!). They will be blown electrically either together or in a planned sequence. You see the whole face and ground behind it lft and drop out... an amazing sight. ... then the front loaders or (because the rock is uniform in size) bucket loaders move in en-masse.
Old style blasting was smaller scale and more frequent... and more dangerous.
Okay that's mostly aggrgate type stuff...
Rock that is wanted in block form varies from huge great lumps of expensive stuff like marble for stautes and columns to granite (or similar) paving pieces that can be as small as 3" cubed.
Rock in block form varies from the real hard stuff like polished marble to surprisingly soft stone... some of which historically proved too soft and crumbled to nothing.
A lot of cut stone for small jobs has been replaced by moulded and cooked artificaila stone... the sort of stuff they sell you for driveways and patios.
The thing with big blocks is that you don't want them to chip, crack, fracture of bust while producing and/or shipping them. So they get handled pretty carefully. The really big stuff is hard to get so it is worth xxx$ more than "ordinary rock. It gets crated. These days it will ride an air suspended truck.
The small stuff used to be manhandled into stacks and stack to stack. A % got chipped or bust but, when paving for example, people wanted some half or part blocks to start/end lines so a bit of damage wasn't a great problem. As with masonry people ordered allowing a % of waste. This also applies to the modern ersatz blocks. The modern product gets palletised. Like bricks this can be with or without an actual wood pallet depending on the material. A lot of bricks and blocks get banded and/or shrink wrapped. Most of this traffic is now by trucks... with specific exceptions.
Of course both large expensive blocks and the small stuff can be put in containers (especially the more exotic rock that might travel internationally)... in which case you never get to see the load even if it does travel by rail. On the other hand it could mean that your model quarry does have a number of containers waiting loading (probably to be shipped by road for a first stage at least).
Then again (for the model scene) containers do get used for a lot of things from storage to offices in and around modern quarries...
Something I haven't covered is conveyor belts. Old quarries frequently used narrow/standard gauge internal rail systems depending on the quarry size and what was being shifted. Of course many used critters to haul the car loads around. Most internal rail systems have been replaced with conveyors, fork lifts and trucks of appropriate size.
I need a coffee
Hope this helps
That's better
Meanwhile; back at conveyors...
Old style quarries worked downhill wherever they could. This meant that the structures could tend to be in a line down the slope.
Modern quarries... do all sorts of things! Massive lines of conveyor belts can go over hills for miles... and even straight through them so that what is a hole in the ground one side of a mountain looks like a mine on the other side where the processing plant is set out.
Before modern rubber/fabric conveyor belts there were other belt systems... as far as I have seen these were variations on bucket chains.
For more chunky material bucket chains were and still are used to lift material. Where the material allows it may be shifted with augers at angles or even vertically. Anything that can be fluidised with air tends to get blown from place to place. Both augers and air systems just look like pipes - of various sizes.
"Rock"/aggragate would tend to ride rail in open hoppers. Anything fine/powdered would ride in covered hoppers or pressure loaded cars... the car type.depending on the viscosity of the powder when the air is pumped in. When I was a kid I saw slate powder (used in lots of starnge jobs from making music discs to cosmetics) loaded in old cement cars (Presflos).
Sand is weird stuff... it varies from coral sand to hard stuff that can be used as building blocks. In between there is sticky soft stuff that gets used for mould making. There must be different grades of this last stuff as some of it goes in open truck and rail hoppers while some is moved in pressure loaded tank trucks. The same area also produced a fine freestone that was used for large ornate mantle pieces in big houses. A lot of this sand is mined rather than quarried.
(Someone opened the doors under one of the loaded sand hoppers when it wasn't over the unloading pit. I have never figured the physics/mechanics of it but instead of the sand spreading out or stopping the car rode up on the pile of sand until the wheels were about 2' of the ground. Very strange).
Along the road from that sand is a huge hole that they extract Fullers Earth from. The buildings are well hidden. Fullers Earth is used (among other things) in cat litter and cosmetics. A lot of modern quarry facilities like this are just huge "cardboard cut-out" boxes that could contain absolutely anything.
Going the other way there were several lime quarries. The explanation lies in the geology. IIRC those quarries shipped out both loose, unworked rough chalk and bagged lime. They each had their own internal rail systems -2' gauge in the quarry and 4' gauge in the works and to the railhead... why they messed about with the difference I don't know. Bagged stuff is almost always palletised these days.
I spent some time at a cement works: most product went out in pressure tanks but a small amount
(2%?)
went out bagged on pallets.
Working the other way round I have known ex quarries used as landfill sites. These can be rail carried compactor containers taken off the rail cars and "extruded" into the hole. One site took train loads of track spoil from major relaying jobs ("deep digs" where everything is taken out and replaced). The hole itself wasn't very big. This surprised me as I thought that it would fill up too fast to be worth laying the connections and track into... but they were burning any timber, recycling any metal and screening the spent ballast for road aggregate to be sold on... as well as getting paid to take the spoil in the first place. They must have been laughing all the way to the bank.
... and all this just skims the surface of quarrying...
ChadLRyanSpecifically the crushers/sorters. I have looked for a kit (found none) & decided to scratch build one, but do not have any info or Pix of crushers/sorters. I want to model two of them for a 'timeline interchangable' layout, 30-40's era & modern.
Except for planned-to-be-short-lived operations most crushers and screens get put into large sheds of one kind or another. Old ones probably rough-cut wood or corrugated tin and modern ones steel or plastic cladding. I'm pretty sure that this is as much to keep the dust in an not have to compensate the neighbours as to protect the machines. It will also tend to keep the noise in.
As your following descriptions says a lot of what is to be seen outside the buildings is conveyor belts and stock piles. More dusty stuff gets stockpiled in silos.
I have recalled that I did once see a crusher/screener in the open. It was unusual in that the screen was a number of tapered drums angled a little upwards. I don't recall if they had blades inside like a concrete mixer.
If someone who can post pics wants to send me an e mail I can send them some pics of a modern facility of steel sheds and conveyors. It's actually a block works but it's pretty much the same as most quarries these days.
From the modelling viewpoint there may of course be loads of fuel and/or machinery into a quarry...
another giant quarry and lime/cement operation is Mississippi Lime (might have a new name) at St. Genevieve Mo. they have a huge quarry operation and a plant that crushes and roasts the limestone. it is along us hwy 61 just north and west of town. served by the old MP (M&I) railroad.
i just looked at it on Bing Maps and the bird's eye view shows over 50 jumbo covered hoppers in the plant. everything is covered with white lime dust. when i worked on the railroad years ago we got a lot of cars out of that place off the TRRA and A&S. they were always covered in white lime dust so bad that it was almost impossible to read the car numbers. eventually the Mopac got smart and they started welding a short piece of steel plate to the side of the car to act like an awning and keep the lime from washing down and obliterating the reporting marks.
talk about an easy weathering project. just swab the car with white shoe polish and streak it downward. even the trucks on those cars were white.
Thanks for all the great information, Dave-the-train I am impressed with your amount of knowledge. I am leaning more toward modeling a gravel quarry that would only supply one type of stone, most likely ballast. The "story" for the industry that I am forming is that of a family owned business with minimal equipment and just enough business to keep the operation going.
Aggregate quarry (model under construction) on Seth Neumann's layout. It is based on Kaiser's facilities in Pleasonton, CA. The model looks like it would have sufficient volume to use rail transport.
Mark
As you have written close to a chapters worth of information, when does the full book on model railroading and quarry's come out.
Ken G Price My N-Scale Layout
Digitrax Super Empire Builder Radio System. South Valley Texas Railroad. SVTRR
N-Scale out west. 1996-1998 or so! UP, SP, Missouri Pacific, C&NW.
markpierceAggregate quarry (model under construction) on Seth Neumann's layout. It is based on Kaiser's facilities in Pleasonton, CA. The model looks like it would have sufficient volume to use rail transport. Mark
That is some excellent modeling, although larger then what I was planning, Still very impressive!!
Sean.
A quarry would more than likely produce different size finished product. When we set our jaw crusher to 4 inch it produces an infinite size of product up to 4 inches. producers can then screen out the different size material from there. Every product that a small operation produces would be a minus size. That means it is not a consistent size. There will be as example 1and 1/2 inch stone pile would contain some dust up to 1 and 1/2 inch stone. Producers would take advantage of that different size material and screen and wash it to a consistent size finished product. Therefore a small producer providing ballast would also provide some stone dust, 3/8, 1/2, 3/4, 1 1/2, and so on. If there is a particular size product that sells better then others then a size larger would be re-crushed and screened. The quarry I work at produces 3 inch minus. The 1 1/2 inch and 3/4 inch stone sells better then the other sizes. By adding a scalping chute to the 3 inch we can direct the 3 inch stone back to the cone crusher via conveyor to re-crush it to the smaller size that sells better. If you set up your plant to produce one size of finished product what do you do with all the under size? In fact you would be producing more waste than product.
Pete
I pray every day I break even, Cause I can really use the money!
I started with nothing and still have most of it left!
locoi1sa Sean. A quarry would more than likely produce different size finished product. When we set our jaw crusher to 4 inch it produces an infinite size of product up to 4 inches. producers can then screen out the different size material from there. Every product that a small operation produces would be a minus size. That means it is not a consistent size. There will be as example 1and 1/2 inch stone pile would contain some dust up to 1 and 1/2 inch stone. Producers would take advantage of that different size material and screen and wash it to a consistent size finished product. Therefore a small producer providing ballast would also provide some stone dust, 3/8, 1/2, 3/4, 1 1/2, and so on. If there is a particular size product that sells better then others then a size larger would be re-crushed and screened. The quarry I work at produces 3 inch minus. The 1 1/2 inch and 3/4 inch stone sells better then the other sizes. By adding a scalping chute to the 3 inch we can direct the 3 inch stone back to the cone crusher via conveyor to re-crush it to the smaller size that sells better. If you set up your plant to produce one size of finished product what do you do with all the under size? In fact you would be producing more waste than product. Pete
Pete,
Thanks, the under size stone was something I had not thought of. So if my quarries primary (best selling product) is ballast, there is going to be a sizes smaller than that as well. What would the smaller sized rock be used for and who would want it, the only thing I can think of would be landscapers.
When you refer to ballast do you mean RR track ballast - which is a whole subject in itself - or the generic "ballast" that goes into concrete (which I think is called "aggregate" in the US??)
Either way... everything to big can usually be knocked down to smaller - everything too small can be found a home... if only back in the hole it came out of. Better than that there are all soprts of people who want aggregate in all sorts of sizes for all sorts of jobs.
It does depend on what the rock is and how it breaks up at the smaller end of the scale. Some will only go to dust... but even dust has its uses.
The LSWR's huge Meldon quarry produced thousands of tone of rail ballast but also a whole load of "Meldon dust" that the railways used for walk ways.
A whole load od roads and parking lots require different grades and sizes of rock that are tipped, profiled and rolled as a sandwich is built up. The top layer of concrete or tar that we see is usually supported on a lot of much less expensive stuff.
Very few rock quarries end up with waste tips... someone is usually looking for material. From the quarries point of view it saves them bother if someone will even take the worst stuff away at their own expense.
Thinking about it slate quarries have spoil tips... and they can be a problem decades later... but that is exceptioanl. In fact even slate can be crunched to powder and sold.
SeanthehackWhat would the smaller sized rock be used for and who would want it, the only thing I can think of would be landscapers
Concrete, Asphalt, road base, stone dust is used for a base for pavers. drainage systems, septic systems, roof shingles, filter products, erosion abatement, roofs of flat top buildings, aggregate enhanced brick and block, exposed aggregate pool and driveways, fill, sand boxes, the list is endless.
Rail road ballast would be a small product line for a producer. Most ballast will outlive the owner of the railroad. Rail road people are cheap by nature and would reuse everything they could and that includes ballast. Ballast cleaners have run the rails as far back as the thirty's.
Its a great concept. All this dirt in the world and people buy it!
Talk about a useful, timely, thread..... I am in the process of building a limestone quarry for my layout! My time period is around 1925. I have searched the internet for many hours to try to find some suitable photos of quarries and equipment from the first part of the lasy century and have pretty much drawn a blank.
Do any of you have (or point me to) photos of quarry operations dating back to that time? Please share!
Thanks!
73
Ray Seneca Lake, Ontario, and Western R.R. (S.L.O.&W.) in HO
We'll get there sooner or later!
Thanks for the ideas, it looks like the list of off layout industries is growing.
Ray,
I too have drawn a blank looking for pictures of older mining equipment. But, as a suggestion, I would think any earth moving equipment in your era would be very convincing on your layout. The only draw back would be if your quarry is a big operation. I would assume the bigger the operation the bigger the equipment needed.
Rock, even when blasted isn't earth. I'm not being pedantic (well not very). Limestone is hard stuff... at least the types used for track ballast are hard to very hard. I think that the stuff used in steel manufacture and cement making is different. Any geologists out there to help us out?
Anyway... for pre war I would look for steam shovels like they used to dig the Panama Canal and work on the big dam projects. Not all the machines they used on those were massive. Generally I would look for a crawler or rail mounted machine with a forward pointing bucket. I doubt that a drag line would be suitable for lifting the rock... although a dragline (or two) might well be used for removing overburden from the top of the quarry... that's an essential but seperate operation.
In the pre war era there wouldn't be a lot of heavy trucks to shuttle the rock around. Again look at the Panama canal and the big dam projects. You'll see lots of temporary track... and on them you'll see various flats, gons and dump cars... where there's a lot of dumping to do they are likely to be air dump cars. the harder the rock the more rough-and-tough the car construction. Some cars had two seperate dump bodies on them. This was to avoid too large a body capsizing the whole car... the seperate bodies had to be tipped one at a time.
Another place to look might be both RR construction and grade seperation projects. The work is similar... shifting large amounts of material from one place to another on a short rotation.
Smaller quarries would tend to use narrow gauge (often 3' in the USA) rather than dump rail use for road wheeled carriers... tyre and probably transmisision technology weren't up to the rigors of quarry work. Don't forget that even the oil industry moved a lot of stuff around the oil fields by rail and not by road.
The quarrying process is only a few stages (some repeated)
Most of the RR equipment will be the tip cars. Flats and gons might be used for moving blocks and would be used in re-locating the temporary tracks. The only other thing you need is a suitable loco or two - or three...
locoi1sa Rail road ballast would be a small product line for a producer. Most ballast will outlive the owner of the railroad. Rail road people are cheap by nature and would reuse everything they could and that includes ballast. Ballast cleaners have run the rails as far back as the thirty's.
Not necessarily. There are several quarries that are virtually exclusively railroad production. Railroads dump thousands of tons of ballast every year. Limestone is not considered premium ballast, it is too soft and dissolves in acid conditions. Granite or trap rock is the premium ballast. It is VERY hard and almost indestructible. It will last for decades.
Dave-the-TrainMost of the RR equipment will be the tip cars. Flats and gons might be used for moving blocks and would be used in re-locating the temporary tracks. The only other thing you need is a suitable loco or two - or three...
You don't ship "ballast" in side dump ("tip") cars. You ship ballast in hoppers, either conventional bottom dump or special cars designed to control the distributions between the rails. Ballast belongs on the track. By design a side dump car dumps to the side of the track. Side dumps are used for dumping rip rap (large chunks of rock) or material used for fills or to repair washouts.
dehusman Dave-the-TrainMost of the RR equipment will be the tip cars. Flats and gons might be used for moving blocks and would be used in re-locating the temporary tracks. The only other thing you need is a suitable loco or two - or three... You don't ship "ballast" in side dump ("tip") cars. You ship ballast in hoppers,
You don't ship "ballast" in side dump ("tip") cars. You ship ballast in hoppers,
Read the context... I am specifically refering to RR equipment within the quarry operation. Your observation would be correct about the kind of cars the external-to-quarry Railroad Companies would haul the finished product away in... but you wouldn't see many conventional or ballast hoppers /MOW cars in use within the quarry... temporary tracks don't usually get ballasted for a start.
Anyway, what I was going to add was a long link... http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YoHVpEea6bgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=bucyrus&source=bl&ots=auzh7YX632&sig=HwLmn7SK72IzAbnVrukw4NqybHs&hl=en&ei=h9RYTPSADYW80gSd9-XoCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CDYQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false
The thought that I had was to look for examples by searching (with a certain well known search engine frequently mentioned here) for some of the machine makers' names. Only one I recalled straight off was "Bucyrus". I would suggest looking at some of the dams etc, spotting makers names on plant and then searching for them...
I just scrolled right through that link... and toward the end there are regular RR cars in one pic... ore cars... but ore working is usually different from rock working.
For later era (post war) machines... http://www.bucyruseriemodels.com/be71-b.aspx The home page says that the models will be available in 1/87... but I haven't dug up anything on where or when yet...
Modern cranes (for block lifting) and more... http://www.mining-technology.com/contractors/materials/bucyrus/
conveyors and stuff... http://www.mining-technology.com/contractors/materials/bucyrus/
wrong scale but some nice toys... you could by one and make your own smaller scale copy... http://www.bucyrusmodels.com/
Another maker, Marion, mentioned here... http://www.stripmine.org/bucyrus.htm
try here... http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rls=com.microsoft%3A*&q=Marion+earth+moving&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
Nope! There's absolutely nothing out there... until I stumble on the right search word...
That's why I hate it when people respond with "Try a Google search".
It took me a few days to get the inspiration to find these few...
Hope they help...
dehusman Limestone is not considered premium ballast, it is too soft and dissolves in acid conditions. Granite or trap rock is the premium ballast. It is VERY hard and almost indestructible. It will last for decades.
Limestone is not considered premium ballast, it is too soft and dissolves in acid conditions. Granite or trap rock is the premium ballast. It is VERY hard and almost indestructible. It will last for decades.
Track ballasted with crummy limestone (Kaibab in this case) but with some granite on one shoulder in an apparent attempt to slowly upgrade the line:
dehusman There are several quarries that are virtually exclusively railroad production. Railroads dump thousands of tons of ballast every year.
There are several quarries that are virtually exclusively railroad production. Railroads dump thousands of tons of ballast every year.
Ballast cars (hopper cars) are the most common non-revenue car on this railroad.
markpierce dehusman Limestone is not considered premium ballast, it is too soft and dissolves in acid conditions. Granite or trap rock is the premium ballast. It is VERY hard and almost indestructible. It will last for decades. Track ballasted with crummy limestone (Kaibab in this case) but with some granite on one shoulder in an apparent attempt to slowly upgrade the line: Mark
Limestone is found in lots of places and varies a huge amount. At one end of the scale there is chalk and at the other there is seriously hard stuff that's probably as durable as granite. Limestone, in all its forms, is a compressed sedimentary made up of billions of sea creatures' skeletons. The critters snuffed it and sank to the bottom of their ancient sea. Depending on what, if anything got dumped on top of them the layers of bones did or didn't get compressed. The ones that got more squashed formed harder rock.
Granite is weird stuff. Back when I did geology they weren't sure what caused it and their were theories about "granitisation". In its many forms (and colours) it doesn't seem to conform to any of the main categories... it isn't properly ignious, sedimenatary or metamorphic... it's just awkward... but almost always very hard and durable. It is usually fine grained but it isn't a freestone (i.e. it can't be sculpted with great ease).
I have given up trying to count the number of main colours of granite ballast. You can start with grey, green, purple, pink and blue... in multiple shades... and they all change depending on the weather and the light. You also get more or less bits of quartz and mica (IIRC) making the bits more or less sparkly.
Meanwhile, back at the track and the pic...
I have hundreds of pics like this (must learn to post them one year). New stone has been "run in" along one side by the MoW. This could be for one of several reasons...
All these things happen all the time at one place or another. This looks quite like the first option.
Raised shoulders appear in lots of engineering texts (I have many copies from them) but they seemed to have become honoured by their absence... until the turn of this century. At least over here they have re-appeared with a vengeance... and they are foul things!
They're foul because you have to skuttle up them to get up oput of the cess onto the track, you can't walk on top of them easily - they slide about - and you have to go up over them and then down to the cess when getting off track. What they are for is to help maintain the track's lateral position. They have been re-introduced first where speed limits have been raised.
Raised shoulders get dropped pretty much as in the picture: usually on both sides. There can be one side on the outside of a curve or that side can be higher than the inside one. They also appear between track - in double and multiple track. (Great fun to walk on). The reason for only one here could be that the MoW train simply ran short... I have known it "once or twice".
Raised shoulders can be just dropped... sometimes they are also shaped by ballast regulators as well... this tends to be in conjunction with tamping activity and/or a stone blower shifting stone about.
One thing about raised shoulders is that they do tend to sit on the tie ends.
On the other hand this could be a top up... the older ballast looks pretty lean... if I were the local MoW boss I'd want to know why the drop was down one side and not all over though. Could be that they've run in the leftovers from a main job behind the camera... It is quite possible that when doing a big drop along a length one side of the cars will get emptied more than the other. there's no point in taking the stone back to the quarry - and this length could clearly use a top-up... so leftovers get dropped where they will be most useful. The local MoW men will be hoping for a machine to come and re-distribute that pile... 'cos shifting it by hand is hot and hard work ... there's more than a house drive's or patio's material to be shifted there. (Don't forget that in the old days most ballast was shifted by hand at some point).
That brings me to the last option... if that side has dropped and/or generally been weakened the strip of stone could be there to be worked in to lift it and/or strengthen it. Again the locals will be hoping for a machine to do it for them.
Track and track maintenance are dynamic things... one of the dynamics being the factor of ballast wandering out of the formation ... another is other (unwanted) material wandering in. The old ballast here looks pretty loose so I wouldn't be surprised if a ballast cleaner has recently been through. This would also account for the relatively low level of ballast. Given the overall view I would be hoping for further drops of stone before a machine or two did some more lining, leveling and packing and profiling.
Anyway... it's nice to see a pic like this. I'm not sue what the machine is... could be one of a variety of beasts.
Who says that ballasting model track is boring? You can add all this detail and "history" to the scene.
You can set up a whole rail business of moving stone. Some can be used as ballast for the railroad, but the majority of crushed aggregate is used for construction. I used to work on the W&LE and some material containing lots of fines were used for fill, but the vast majority we moved went into concrete block fairly small size stone, I think 1/8", 3/8" went into asphalt (Walthers made an asphalt plant), and 3/4" material went into concrete (Walthers and others make concrete plants). Rip-rap (large boulders of various sizes) was often used in waterfront construction projects and maintenance of way work along rivers and was moved by rail in side dump cars, but can also be moved in mill gons and unloaded with a backhoe with a grapple. I think Walthers also produced a stone crushing plant and conveyors I believe. Older quarries had processing plants with crushing and screening and tipples for truck and rail loading that look somewhat similar to coal processing plants. In some cases some kinds of stone create lots of fine dust when crushed and needs to be washed somewhat like coal. Stone is often fairly seasonal in northern climates as it can be very difficult to unload if it freezes.
Stone can be loaded in large volumes with overhead bins, or in many cases from trackside stockpiles with a couple of large front end loaders. Depending on the quality of the limestone, some quarries such as the ones on the WE in Ohio can produce not just construction stone, but chemical lime for covered hopper loading or high grade stone for steel mill blast furnaces. The prime stone is used for these purposes, and the lower grade stone in other parts of the quarry will be used for construction materials.
Lastly crushed stone can be moved in purpose built short length Ortner three pocket rapid discharge cars, short Greenville two pocket cars, or steel coal hoppers. Walthers makes all of these types of cars. Stone is usually short haul and therefore truck competitive, so much of the time it is hauled in older steel coal hoppers. The best coal hoppers have a continuous slope sheet (no change in slope sheet angle) so that with a car shaker the stone will flow reasonably well. Coal hoppers don't have as steep slope sheets as the Ortner and Greenville purpose built cars. The new Tangent 4-bay steel coal hopper of a UP prototype have 45 degree slope sheets make an excellent stone hopper as well. One benefit of a purpose built car is that they are shorter so there is less siding required in the quarry or destination sites which again helps to keep capital investment down in a very truck competitive business.
Actually, quite a large amount of stone moves by rail on the East Coast, CSX runs Rock Runners into the Baltimore area off the former Western Maryland. Tilcon ships trains of stone in Connecticut on the P&W down the Northeast Corridor as far south as Long Island. There are stone trains in the Atlanta area on both CSX and NS. NS moves a lot of stone in Eastern Pennsylvania to Philadelphia, and down the Delmarva Penninsula. The FEC and CSX move lots of stone in Florida. UP moves lots of stone in Texas - some of these trains are all older mill gons and are unloaded with a car topper (a slightly modified backhoe which can climb up on the car and rides along the top chords of the gons and scoops the stone out of the car into piles next to the rail or into trucks). The WE moves lots of stone in Ohio, as does CSX. UP also moves stone in the San Francisco Bay area. BNSF moves stone in Oklahoma and Texas as well. The P&W moves stone in Oregon. The Alaska Railroad moves up to three trains a day of gravel in the summer from pits outside Anchorage to terminals in Anchorage where it is crushed and sized at the destination instead of where it is mined. Most stone now moves in unit trains from 25 to 75 cars long. Unit trains are used because equipment utilization is critical to keeping costs low enough to compete against trucks. Interline service is not common (except sometimes for rail ballast) as the low rates are hard to divide between railroads and equipment utilization is harder to manage in interline service.
Sand can also move by rail for construction (concrete block, asphalt, and concrete plants), but is less common as the fine nature of it makes it leak from doors which are not tight when the material is dry, or it sticks together and is hard to unload when it is wet. However, NS has done some backhauling of sand back to the stone quarries. Often where there is sand there is no native stone and vice versa, so backhauls can be a possibility.
In a few cases granite and trap rock ground fairly fine (roofing granules) is loaded in covered hoppers and goes to asphalt shingle plants which may also take tank cars of asphalt and boxcars of fiberglass rolls (the base for the shingle) and in some cases the boxcars are reloaded with outbound shingles. CN moves a large volume of roofing granules in two-bay covered hoppers out of the Upper Penninsula of Michigan and parts of Wisconsin. The WE had a shingle plant at Medina, OH. The color of the stone is important for shingles.
Lastly, you could also spot tank cars of asphalt (not too common because heat is required to keep the material liquid) or covered hoppers of cement at the block and concrete plants to add more variety. So you can model a very nice commerce around a stone quarry. Limestone is the most common material, and preferred for block and concrete production as it is generally cheaper and bonds better with cement. Granite is preferred for railroad ballast and asphalt as it is stronger than limestone and for asphalt wears better and provides a better antiskid surface. But price is critical so whatever is produced locally is what is used for most projects (although some projects such as airport runways require anti-skid stone such as granite or trap rock). So have some fun with an interesting and often ignored commodity which can generate some pretty nice business for your railroad.
I have a gravel quarry on my layout - sort of. It's actually an "off-layout" industry consisting of a spur going through the backdrop to a pair of stub tracks in an accessible location. When I get around to doing scenery I'm thinking of a chain link fence with a gate across the tracks (to keep trespassers out) and perhaps a depiction of the crusher house in the distance on the backdrop. This makes for a nice empties-in loads-out operation, generating a regular stream of traffic while using almost no space.
But if I had the space... and a lot of photos, some good articles or a book, the choice of a kit or two (ideally from a Cornerstone-type industry-theme group of kits), and more photos, yeah, I'd put it "on-layout".
Quarrying blocks was mentioned early on... try this...
http://www.encyclopedia.com/video/dtgji08uW8o-stone-quarrying-machines-at-work.aspx
I love the Personal Protective Equipment...
and there's a whole pile of links...
including aguy drilling with his feet... and enthusiastic sledgehammer work...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj06C59KPtA&feature=player_embedded
enjoyed the videos, thanks. i'm surprised the guy stacking the stones when they come off the converyor doesn't have feet like a duck.
earlier, i mentioned the Mississippi Lime (new name is ?) limestone quarry at Alton Illiniois. after studying the bird's eye view on Bing Maps, my suspicions were confirmed. they do not have an open quarry pit. they are tunneling under the city of Alton and bringing the rock out from underground mining operations. the openings are visable if you poke around a bit on the site.