Missed the very beginning of a train today going north on the CP here in Dupont Pa,what I saw was a continous string of "HERZOG" hoppers,60 or more,looked like ballast in them..Anybody got an idea who they are?
What you saw was a Herzog PLUS train, which is a GPS-based system for spreading ballast. It's a two-part process. First a Herzog survey technician and a railroad track superintendent will drive the track to be ballasted in a high-rail vehicle while the Herzog technician records the GPS coordinates for various points along the track (road crossings, start and end points of curves, etc). The survey data is left with the track superintendent. Some time later, the 60-car train full of ballast arrives. The survey data is loaded into a laptop aboard the train. As the train proceeds down the track, the hopper doors open and close automatically to drop ballast according to the survey data. The last I heard Herzog had 15 trains in the field. BTW, I wrote all the field operating and maintenance manuals for the sytem.
Thanks guys! Bob Stuart,the train must have been on it's way somewhere,it was doing 30-40 MPH when I saw it,all the cars I saw were full.Both CP and the R&N have been doing a lot of upgrades here,CP upgraded all the track from Taylor yard south in the last few years,bet they're doing more north up to Binghamton on the ex-EL now..
I saw on the website that Herzog invented the Cartopper material handler. Very interesting and innovative. Bobstuart: Welcome to TrainBoard.
There aint enough $$$ or drugs to get me to walk a backhoe from the ground up onto the top of a gondola...N O P E !!! :tb-ooh: .
One good thing for us is that Herzog seems to use any type gon (for ties, I think) or hopper for their trains. And IIRC the motive power I saw for one of their work trains was a hi-rail 3-axle dump truck. Dunno if it could pull a 60-car ballast train, but it was heading up at least a 15 car work train.
