It might have to do with what they're carrying over this line. The finer dust must leak slightly through the hopper bay doors and onto the tracks. Exposure to sunlight, a chemical reaction with rain or ground water combined with the nature of the ballast or ties (how they're treated?) might be responsible. It doesn't seem to bother the railroad. But it got my brain revving up. That's a good thing at this hour. Or it could be alien dust. But I don't see Mulder and Scully. Someone should go and take a sample and run it through the mass spectrometer...
It's on both tracks. One heavier than the other. The right hand definitely has a built up trail down the middle.
Blue Ridge Southern's former UP SD-40-2 WAMX 4205 rests at Canton, NC on 09/18/2021. This may be BLU's only unit with a nose herald.
My money's on a salt compound leaking from hoppers. I'm guessing the railroad ships unit trains of fertilizer, potash or salt thru here, and the leaks have tainted the ROW.
Here's an example I found of stuff leaking from freight cars, staining the ROW. In this case, taconite. Taconite? Taco night? Sounds delicious... https://www.flickr.com/photos/127078465@N06/42481997694/
We have an ex Milw MP15ac here. I think it was 480, currently GATX 326. I likely serviced it in Milwaukee in the 80s.
Taconite, aka iron ore, aka the stuff loaded into the Edmund Fitzgerald and a thousand other Great Lakes ore ships. Sent from my SM-A716U using Tapatalk
CP train 198 east meets CP train 369 west at Foxholm, ND. The 198 was far too long for the crossings and held short west of the siding until 369 was near. 369 then eased past while 198 paused in the siding. Holding short: The meet: Waiting for 369 to clear:
I walked the EJ&E between high school and home, and during the winter when the Great Lakes froze, the 'J' carried solid trains of taconite to the steel mills in South Chicago and Gary, IN. The stuff is hard and round, and when lands on crossties, it's like walking on marbles.
I'm all for Taco Night. Mmmmm... tacos.... And CN has tunnel motors! Looks like ex-SP SD45T-2s. Hey CN, send some of those up my way (and give me a heads-up too...). Taconite might explain the mess, heavier on one track because empties go on one track (the less stained one), and full loads the on the other.
Taconite is from up here in the tundra and it is derived from low grade iron ore. It was first mined on a large scale beginning in the 1950's when high grade ore was pretty much exhausted. The ore is crushed into a powder, the iron separated from the waste rock with magnetism, formed into spherical pellets, and shipped to the steel mills. I remember learning all that when my family vacationed up north, in the very early sixties, and visited the iron ore open pit mine near Virginia, MN. Of course, the thing that fascinated me most was watching the ore trains making their way out of the pit on the 1:1 helix spiral around the walls of the pit. Doug
Doug, the way taconite is formed is neat, but it's baked and in winter when the humidity is high they give a spectacular display of steam. I want to see that someday.
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