Comments on: In reply to that smooth Ballast Train contribution from James Adeney (attachment_id=7780) from the other day regarding his comments on the “ugly” ballast put down on the Galt sub over the summer of 1979, here is another example shot in Milton 2 days previous. The train is working its’ way westward, and this is a brief moment in time where tremendous clouds of grey sooty dust was not billowing thru the air. Instead, it was stack exhaust. And true to James’ words, the power was always interesting, always changing. Here we see RS-10 #8559 and GP35 5019 along with that straggler, RS-3 8446.

By: RonaldB

RonaldB — Tue, 02 Mar 2021 05:20:25 +0000

Lots of power was needed as they were often pulling a ‘skate’ under the ties to lift the rail out of the old ballast. There were a lot of signal issues when the black slag ballast was first installed, because of its high metal content (it was skimmings from Sudbury mines) it was conductive & until a couple of rainfalls oxidized it, sometimes short circuits would mess things up.

By: dpurcell

dpurcell — Thu, 17 Jul 2014 02:20:45 +0000

Great shot of an interesting lashup Arnold! It would look good in HO scale.

By: Alex181

Alex181 — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 16:11:14 +0000

Very great shot! lot of nice smoke and good power!