Interesting Prototype Sight.

Rode my motorcycle out along the tracks over Beaumont Hill this morning and discovered that the U.P. is doing some heavy-duty track maintenance work out there: cleaning the ballast, Etc.
But leading the pack of track maintenance critters was something that I've never seen before: a large brown Road-Railer truck that featured extensible legs to stabilize itself and a large articulated arm in back that had a big electromagent hung from the end.
Said truck was moving forwards a bit at a time and then extending the hydraulic legs so that the arm's operator could swing it back and forth across the ballast and off to the sides to pick up anything magnetic -misplaced old spikes, tie plates, et all- before the following machines could inhale them and screw up their delicate innards.
As best I could tell while going past at 50 MPH, the truck also features a bin where the steel/iron scrap gets dumped; presumably for recycling later on. (There was quite a bit of magnetic dross hanging from the magnet when I rode past, so it must work.)
I'm thinking of riding back out there tomorrow and taking the camera along.
Anybody be interested in pictures?
~Pete

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As always ...

the magnet is a quick cleaner of all of the magnetic material that may be floating abou tin the ballast. chips from the rails as well as pins, brake shoes and all of the other dross that happens on the railroad.. run that rail grinder by and there's a lot of stuff that doesn't want to be in the ballast!
-- Bob May
rmay at nethere.com http: slash /nav.to slash bobmay http: slash /bobmay dot astronomy.net

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Definitely. I think I've seen a machine like that, and I was wondering what the hell it was doing. *