I picked up a copy of Brain Solomon's book Narrow Gauge Steam Locomotives. Naturally, a lot of the book is about the narrow gauge lines in Colorado and New Mexico. A description of the construction of the D&RG said the lines were ballasted with dirt and cinders (and presumably some ash). If you're out in high desert country where there isn't much rain, can a railroad get away ballast that doesn't drain well like rock would? Going on Google maps, I saw that the mountains there get some snow, so I figure there would be some flowing water. Wouldn't flowing water and cheap ballast be an ugly mixture to work with? A couple years back, I saw a yard track on the DM&E at Wall S.D. that seemed to be ballasted with dust and tumbleweeds. The Badlands and the area around Wall are almost a desert.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Murphy Siding . . . If you're out in high desert country where there isn't much rain, can a railroad get away ballast that doesn't drain well like rock would? . . . Wouldn't flowing water and cheap ballast be an ugly mixture to work with? . . .
Deserts are deserts because they have little rain, not because of soil conditions. Still, I was surprised that the desert around Phoenix drains so poorly. You'd think being so rocky and sandy that it would drain well, but apparently not so.
But that's an observation from just 1 place and 1 time. There are many here - mudchicken, diningcar, MikeF90, KP, desertdog, to name just a few (no offense intended to others not named) - who may have additional or diifferent observations and experiences.
- Paul North.
Early railroads were built quick and cheap just to become established as their financing required. Good ballast was a luxury to come later with construction improvments. The first job of ballast is to bear the loading of individual ties evenly. Even poorly drained ballast will do that if it does not get wet. But it will get wet, and when it does, the track needs to be lifted and realigned, and ballast is then filled and tamped to hold the corrected track structure. The better the draining ability of the ballast, the less frequently the track needs to be realigned and surfaced. Dirt and cinders are just ballast that is cheap first cost, but more costly to maintain.
Murphy,
Any ash in the raw coal probably got thrown out of the stack, but the cinders were unburnable parts of the coal and what I have seen of it looks, in part, like glass which is melted silica. The NP, for one, seems to have used cinders on their western branch lines until the end of steam.
The other point is that a coal fired railway generated many tons of ash every day. It was dumped from engines into ash pits and then shoveled into gondolas. This was all engine house expense and was separate from the issue of what to do with it. Using it for ballast not only provided better ballast than dirt, but also got rid of a waste product. Today the PR department would be touting it as a recycling program.
Also remember that when these lines were built, the axle loading of equipment, and gross tonnage on many branches, was a lot less than what we see on main lines now.
Mac
The AE&FR was built by an electric utility back in 1896. It also served a power plant at the Elgin State Hospital. The electric company's and the hospital's plants supplied the ash (cinders) that were used. It was and mostly still is cinder ballasted. When it expanded into a Forest Peserve, that was stone ballasted track. And yes, rain does wash out the cinders sometime and that is replaced with stone. The hospital converted to gas in 1965 and the AE&FR is now owned by the Fox River Trolley Museum.
For a period of time the B&O (and maybe other carriers) use steel mill slag as ballast. Worked great - right up until electrically operated track circuits became commonplace. The metalic residue contained in the slag would conduct electricity and all sorts of maladies would happen.
Everybody looks for the cheapest and most plentiful 'ballast' they can find - rock or not.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
It wan't unusual for cinders to be used for yard track ballasting.
There was a salty old yardmaster who roared out when the new diesels began to show up...
"Diesels! Where are we supposed to get our cinders from?"
100+ years ago the owners of our lumberyard bought a piece of property down by the river where the Milwaukee Road crossed the Illinois Central. The area, I'm told, was a swampy red light district with old shacks and squatters. As the story goes, the new owners then filled in the area with cinders and ash supplied for free by the railroads. Five years ago when we moved to a different location all the 100 year old buildings were torn down. Over the years all of the buldings had settled at different rates. Some of them were up or down a foor or two in 50 feet. They were bad. Would it have been the cinders, the ash, or both that made such unstable fill?
On the Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad, exFt Dodge Des Moines & Southern, between the high bridge and the Des Moines River bridge you can ride over 4 timber trestles that you will never see. The FDDM&S filled them in with cinders and ash over the years from their power plant that was at Fraser, IA.
Some years back, they were doing some maintenance work trying to clean out a culvert. They inadvertantly exposed part of one trestle.
Jeff
Murphy Siding Would it have been the cinders, the ash, or both that made such unstable fill?
The swampy area is what makes the fill unstable. Fills have to be maintained, just dumping additional fill material on top of the existing fill on a unstable foundation does nothing to stabilize the foundation. The foundation is the problem. Railroads operating through such areas are continually surfacing and raising their tracks to maintain acceptable alignment. Not doing the same to structures constructed on such fills will result in the deterioration of such structures as you noted.
To add to Balt, who has it right, the cinders - abrasive rascals they are, do not drain well with little voids. Those little voids that get plugged easilly with dirt fines in a swampy area become classic "ballast pockets" that feed the swelling and shrinking of the unstable fill. As the ballast pockets get pushed-down in the fill by the addition of new ballast, the water trapped in the ballast pockets just feeds the instability.
Roadmasters will pick ballast over cinders or screenings every day. The ballancing act comes into play in yards and around switches.
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