Another Ballast Car Question

FWIW, a recent development is the appearance of contractors that specialise in track maintenance and rehabilitation for shortlines. These buy/lease whatever they need to bring the ballast etc to the locations where it's needed, sometimes replacing old reporting marks, sometimes not. Last suymmer I saw one here on the Huron Central: they used a trackmobile to haul three or four hoppers at a time.

HTH

Hi Wolf! Basically, I'm trying to justify running my snappy orange CN ballast cars in an 1980's AC freight train. I'll do it anyway I just wanted to know if I could justify it somehow. I think CN also does the ballast work on MY version of the AC...heh. Yup, I'm sure they do - that is until I see an actual AC ballast car. Odd - all the photos available online, and not one single ballast car. Maybe they just used regular hoppers with a flanger? Can you do that?

Mac B.

When i used to be able to watch the MoW guys work, they took regular ties and placed them in front of the car wheels that were in the immediate dump area. In other words, they'd take the ties, place them on the tracks and let the wheels push them along. This would level the ballast the prevent any from derailing the ballast cars. As a car would empty. they'd move the tie(s) to the next cars to be dumped.

Oh, I don't think you need much justification. Those cars showed up all over the place. They didn't stay all that snappy, though, a grungy grey-brown skin of dirt covered them pretty quickly.

polar bear spake thus:

For me, this brings up another question: you say you've noticed many of these cars with roller-bearing trucks. Does this mean you've also seen some with so-called "friction bearing" trucks?

Don't know where you are, but of course we all know that these old bearings were banned for interchange usage in the U.S. (and I assume Canada as well). Are there places that still use the? Shortlines? Belt line RRs?

Regarding "friction bearings": this is another idiotic phrase that makes no sense. Shouldn't it be "anti-friction bearings"? (Even that is nonsense, as the function of a bearing is to reduce friction; kind of like saying "adhesive glue".)

And in the case of the H & K cars in Birdsboro, Pa, Some got some really creative graffiti!..

A lot of the older cars have friction trucks with roller bearing refits...

Not recently. Photos from the AC circa 1980 show all their MW equipment with friction bearings - one car even had arch bar trucks! Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of AC ballast cars, and I'm beginning to suspect they didn't have any. That would be typical of the way they operated: everything on the cheap.

Digging through my collection I did find a few ballast cars with friction bearings on US roads, but they were older photos, so it doesn't prove anything. All the newer shots (post 1980) have roller bearings, including some obviously older rebuilds.

Since many ballast cars were rebuilt from standard hoppers, I suspect they had their bearings upgraded at the same time. They'd need them anyway, if they were moved in regular traffic, on or off the home road. At least that's my theory.

Mac B.

I was thinking that a fully-loaded ballast car still needs to be moved, and needs to be moved with second-string power. I also think that a friction bearing truck would be "Yet another oddball part" to keep around, and they'd be replaced or reworked to take a roller bearing if only to reduce the spares inventory.

I can envision a couple of ways to retrofit older trucks, but I've no idea whether it wouldn't just be cheaper to swap out the trucks for newer trucks that are past their "interchange" life.

Was the phrase "friction bearings" used prior to roller bearings being introduced?

Roller bearing as opposed to ball bearing or sleeve bearing or any even some exotic things like magnetic bearings.

Each has their application niche, roller bearings being nearly universal in machinery that moves heavy loads quickly with heavy wheel loadings (cars, railroads, much stationary machinery . . )

Simple answer... yes! There is a lot of stone quarried here in NW Ohio and I've seen more than one "rock train" headed in and/or out of the area. I'd guess it is handled much the same way other unit trains are handled.

dlm