Western Railroad Discussion > Ballast Color

I have seen dark, gray, light and mixed color ballast. What determines which color or type of ballast they will use for a particular line?

The biggest considerations for ballast are as follows:

1) COST...
2) COST...
3) COST...
4) PROPER SIZE
5) TYPE OF ROCK

As I may have mentioned above, cost is the number one factor. Both the purchase cost of the ballast at the rock quarry and then the cost of shipping it to the destination. Railroad owned quarries (usually operated by a contractor) are cheaper than privately owned quarries so railroad tend to ship the ballast further from railroad owned facilities. Besides cost (did I mention that before?) the rock must be of the proper size but that is usually pretty easy to do with the right screening equipment. The type of rock is also very important, you want rock that will hold up over time and it your railroad has concrete ties then you must make sure the ballast your getting doesn't chemically react with the concrete ties as it can turn a concrete tie in a pile of rebar and cement powder fairly quickly.

Most of the time, the color of the rock in ballast is just product of the above considerations.

BNSF6400 Wrote:
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> >
> Most of the time, the color of the rock in ballast
> is just product of the above considerations.

Here in California when I see red/pink/white mix rock ballast I know it is BNSF. UP is uniformly gray rocks.
C.

Carol Voss
Bakersfield, CA

CarolVoss Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> BNSF6400 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > >
> > Most of the time, the color of the rock in
> ballast
> > is just product of the above considerations.
>
> Here in California when I see red/pink/white mix
> rock ballast I know it is BNSF. UP is uniformly
> gray rocks.
> C.
In Kansas the MoP's ballast was usually had a rose colored tint. At one time I heard the MoP also used slag from the steel mill in Pueblo for something---any ideas on what or how that would be?
Brian Stevens

SCKP187 Wrote:
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> In Kansas the MoP's ballast was usually had a rose
> colored tint. At one time I heard the MoP also
> used slag from the steel mill in Pueblo for
> something---any ideas on what or how that would
> be?

Crushed slag from the iron-ore refining process makes good ballast. The Southern Pacific used some from Kaiser Steel in Fontana, California.

> Here in California when I see red/pink/white mix
> rock ballast I know it is BNSF.

Is Shipley still their big source?

the quarry where it comes from, natural color

timz2 Wrote:
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> > Here in California when I see red/pink/white
> mix
> > rock ballast I know it is BNSF.
>
> Is Shipley still their big source?


Newberry.

In New Mexico it's Mainline Ballast out toward Vaughn, In Missouri it's Iron Mountain Rock south
of St. Louis.

Does BNSF still quarry any ballast from the pit at Mesa north of Eltopia WA?

Larry Dodgion
Wilsonville, OR

A big source of "pink" ballast in the Rocky Mountain and Plains states is the granite quarry at, well, Granite, Wyoming--west of Cheyenne on the Union Pacific. Both BNSF and UP used to use ballast from that quarry--which, though located on the UP, was at one time owned by the BNSF, if memory serves. Don't know about now.

The D&RGW and successor SP used a lot of slag ballast from Eilers, near Leadville, Colorado, on the Tennessee Pass line. In fact, some of the last trains to run on TP were ballast extras from the slag piles at Eilers. They also used slag from the steel mill at Pueblo and the Kennecott copper smelter at Bingham (Salt Lake City). From what I was told, UP stopped using slag when they took over the SP.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/11 13:26 by WW.