Talk:Track ballast

Added the US term ties to "translate" sleepers. Kether83 07:28, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Constuction
The following compound sentence is mutually exclusive:

Ballast less than 300 mm (11.8 inches) thick can lead to vibrations that damage nearby structures. However, increasing the depth beyond 300 mm (11.8 inches) adds no extra benefit in reducing vibration. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.162.0.42 (talk) 16:49, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

textile mat
under ballast prevents fine soil particles to creep up, or the ballast stones to dive in. --93.111.94.104 (talk) 19:33, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Austrian producer of ballast service equipment with factory in Canada
see http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasser_%26_Theurer --93.111.94.104 (talk) 19:38, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Pneumatic Ballast Injection (PB) and Stoneblowing
Could it be possible that

pneumatic ballast injection is the generic name

while stoneblowing is the trademark?

Remembering the sad case of the loss of trademark of Linoleum, trademarks are better protected if there is a parallel non-trademark term for a product. Tabletop (talk) 05:20, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Stoneblowing is Proper Term
I think it's vice-versa. Stoneblowing is the term used within the industry. In 2 years of going to railroad engineering conferences and a specialty in ballast, I have never heard the term "Pneumatic Ballast Injection."

Selig's Track Geotechnology & Substructure uses the term Stoneblower, but does capitalize it throughout. A quick review of other publications on it use the term stoneblowing almost exclusively.

One thing to note is that Stoneblowing has not seen much use outside the UK, I think. They briefly brought one to the US back in 2006 or 2007 for testing, but generally found that overall life-cycle costs were higher on all but the highest density lines, and then only marginally better. Railway Track & Structures, a free online industry magazine/publication, had the article sometime in 2007 or 2008.

Slopes09 (talk) 06:59, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Period comments
The values for 60lb mainline rail are misleading due to the age of the material quoted. Nowdays rail is much heavier. Also the values should be properly presented including metric units. 81.2.110.250 (talk) 20:46, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

The comment about early engineers not understanding the importance of the material is also PoV and not backed up with a citation. Early railway systems were much lighter vehicles running at lower speed and ash was just fine (a practice continued in low speed yards until the 1960s at least.

Period Comments Seconded
Those values are REALLY old. I'm currently studying railroad ballast for my master's thesis, and can supply some modern numbers in about 6 months once it's published and citable. Current values for crushed stones, granitic, trap rock, and quartzite, vary from about 90 pcf-115 pcf, roughly.

In the meanwhile, I believe somewhere there's a University of Illinois report from the 1970s on Illi-Track (computer track modeling software) that lists some densities for various ballast types. These could be changed into per mile statistics using a standard AREMA cross-section for ballast.

Hay's Railroad Engineering lists a few densities, and Selig's Track Geotechnology and Substructure Management lists some as well.

Once that thesis is written, I may have a whack at this page.

Slopes09 (talk) 06:36, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Additional Ballast Topics Needed, Plus Basic Fixes
Off the top of my head here are a few topics that are needed in this article.
 * Historical vs. Current Ballast materials (i.e. what was used in the past vs. what is the current practice)
 * Overview of Ballast fouling (causes, why it's bad, pumping, etc.)
 * General organizational changes
 * Geosynthetics, i.e. Geogrids (as mentioned above)

Best single resource for ballast, at the moment, is Track Geotechnology and Substructure Management by Ernest Selig and John Waters.

Slopes09 (talk) 06:59, 6 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Good if it included something about the frequency of the maintenance work. How often does the ballast need to be checked and replenished? Shanen (talk) 11:08, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Burnt clay?
Burnt-clay ballast (in lead paragraph) is a wikilink, so naturally I clicked it to learn more about why it is not suitable in spite of its use in some countries. I was surprised by the link taking me to Ceramics, which, while it has some relevance, says nothing about the suitability of its use as track ballast. I will remove the wikilink quality and leave it for someone who reverts this edit to give a good reason for doing so. David Spector (talk) 14:01, 2 December 2016 (UTC)