Spotted this interesting side dump ballast car? in a local train yard over the weekend.
Question is what are the circular parts infront of the trucks? 2 on each side. Does ballast get dropped out of these right onto the tracks or are they something else to keep the ballast off the rail head?
Can someone enlighten me?
The circular bits are actually vertically-mounted hydraulic cylinders. They lift the entire body of the car to dump out the doors.
Ballast does get dumped directly onto the track.
Well that was quick Thanks Robbie. I just couldn’t figure out what those things were. I kept thinking they were for something down not up like to lift the dump body. Silly me.
I guess I’m more used to the old timey way where the doors would open then workers would shovel. I gotta get with the times of this modern age we live in. What will be next? LOL
Those cars are used more for moving rip rap than ballast. When dumping rip rap, depending on how close the car is to the locomotive it can rock the locomotive side to side.
I would imagine that with dumping rip- rap, you would have to re-level and dress the ballast when the dumping is complete.
When I worked the work train for a a couple of months when I was forced to it, we dumped rip rap mostly in areas that needed shoring up, around bridge abutments, etc. A few car loads of rip rap rolled down the entire embankment and ended up in the tide flats. Oops!
The rip rap was far enough away from the ballast shoulder that it didn’t need to be redressed.