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They are frequently old hopper cars from revenue service that have been cascaded to MoW (Maintenance of Way) service and altered from the usual hopper outlets to side discharge outlets (often the small square ones mentioned above). A very few were converted from covered hoppers with some of the roof left in place - usually the two end panels. There are also a (relatively) few purpose built cars that can centre drop as well as side drop. Walthers do the former and (I think) Atlas do the latter. Roundhouse did some converted Offset Side Hoppers with long unloading doors to side discharge. Ballast Hoppers of this kind are often marked with a load limit line for stone and sometimes have holes about 6"x2" cut along above this line to make it obvious from trackside when they are loaded to the limit. This is because stone is heavier than coal and a full stone load by volume would be far too heavy by weight. Ballast cars tend to run in strings from the supplying quarry to the site of track maintenance. Small amounts of top-up ballast tend to travel by Gondola... but there are always exceptions to any rule. Aggregates and building/concrete ballast would normally be loaded in conventional hoppers... with the same load restrictions. Sand in the US tends to go by covered hopper as far as I can make out... presumiably because of too much spillage over distance. The only other regular side drop hopper cars that I know of were coke cars. I have "aquired" a cascaded coke car as the ballast car for my (fictitious) shortline. Sand and aggregates from quarry also tended to use cascaded ore cars... loaded nearer to full because ore is of similar weight/density. I've not seen pics of taconite cars in this service... probably didn't get cascaded so soon. Roundhouse also do/did a centre discharge sand hopper of ancient looking design. these weren't used for MoW ballast that I know of... but my shortline has them too... Rock (as in Rip-rap) would be hauled in Gons or side dump cars (side tipping). Walthers do the Difco side dumps and there are plenty of gons... though, strangely, few in MoW livery. Because Ballast cars unload around the track they are standing on the lower parts are frequently smothered in dust from the ballast... the insides are also usually pale (stone) coloured) this applies more to limestone ballast than granite which doen't dust so much.
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