All: The Great Northern RR owned some of the area where granite was "mined"
near St. Cloud, MN. They took all of the scrap and broken pieces and crushed
them for ballast. NP also used the granite. It was screened to separate out
the fines and oversized pieces which were recycled back into the crusher. The
smaller size pieces were sold for landscape work but the mixed larger sizes
were used for ballast. In later years, the GN either sold or leased the
operation to a contractor.
Cy probably knows more about this. Per a friend who was in track engineering
for the NP, it was impossible to drive a stake into the ballast between the
tracks so they used nails driven into the ties.
----- Original Message -----
From:
To: cbq@yahoogroups.com
Sent: 2/5/2007 7:29:22 AM
Subject: [CBQ] Slag Ballast
The slag ballast was also used on the mainline and the C&I and I suspect many
other places. Per the info. I have in my files it came the steel mills where
it is a waste byproduct and was therefore inexpensive.
Per my notes of conversations w/ a couple old Eola switchen(Wade Gorman and
"Bones" Mathers) the slag came into Eola in C.H.T.S.E. composite gons.for some
time. At Eola the slag was unloaded at the "slag hole trks" where it was
stockpiled and later loaded into ballast cars for work trains to distribute.
If you look in one of the Q Color Books you can see a picture of the slag
piles at that time. They're the white mountains in the background of one of the
Eola shots. The slag ballast was in place for many years under BN until they
started using the granite chips.
Leo
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