Having just watched a two NS locos hauling a long train of Herzog ballast hoppers through Roanoke VA, made me wonder how many, if any, large scalers have a Herzog train. I also wonder which hoppers are/were available in large scale to model such a train?
I’m pretty familiar with the style car as they are used on the local short line to haul construction debris, but I’d never knew they were Herzog hoppers before this post. Thanks for furthering my RR education (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-smile.gif)
Here is one in C&D Service on the Housatonic RR I shot near New Milford, CT…
And when I Googled Herzog Hoppers, there are lots of images…
The dump doors, or whatever they are called, are positioned so that the ballast comes out of the cars onto the ties outside of the rails. The EBT even had a few ballast hoppers. Since they are usually used for maintenance of the right of way, and I have no MOW equipment, I don’t have none of those type of cars. But they are interesting.
Jon,
Herzog is just the name of a railroad company that owns a variety of MOW equipment that is contracted out of other railroads. They don’t ‘own’ a particular style of car.
The open top hopper cars high side gondolas are used by a variety of railroads for hauling a variety of different goods. I used to spot a steel mill in West Seattle that got car load after car load of these open top hoppers high side gondolas with scrap metal. I can’t remember what the official ARR designation is for these cars at the moment. I did a little research and it looks like the car design is manufactured by Thrall, and is classified as a 4012 cu foot gondola and originally built around the late 1970’s.
I would imagine that Herzog likes these cars because they have a higher weight limit versus a regular ballast car/converted 3 bay hopper.
Thanks to Dave and Craig for ‘splainin’ this car.
If I’m reading Dave’s post correctly, the car dumps the ballast only on the outside of the rails. Is there another car that services the ties between the rails?
Thanks Craig. I did notice that the C&D cars do not have the side dump doors. As a matter of fact, I don’t know if they have doors at all. Probably why you are calling them high side gons. I do know the local railroaders refer to them as “garbage gons”. All of the ones in service here locally are old and very beat up.
Steve Featherkile said:
Thanks to Dave and Craig for ‘splainin’ this car.
If I’m reading Dave’s post correctly, the car dumps the ballast only on the outside of the rails. Is there another car that services the ties between the rails?
Yes, and no the ballast cars dump both inside and outside of the rail by adjusting the angle of the dumper. Lots of different types of ballast dump cars but all will dump inside and outside the rail. Let me tell you running a ballast train that is dumping is not a lot of fun! 1-2 miles an hour, can’t go too slow, can’t go to fast. I spent a month forced to a work train, and we dumped ballast car after ballast car…
Looks like they modified the way rock gets placed…
John
John,
That’s the poor mans way of dumping ballast, just use a regular bottom dump hopper… Looks like an interesting set up though!
Lots of times, they will drag a railroad tie in front of the rear wheels to somewhat level the pile before the tamper/flanger comes by to really work it in to place.
The tie was used to level the ballast when using the old style ballast hoppers to prevent derailing the ballast car due to to much ballast dumped at one time and yeas to also spread. Later RJD