Re: Ballasting the C&TS

I think there is a romantic tendency these days to think of the DRGW in the same terms as the poor ole RGS. Until the last couple of years of freight ops the DRGW ng. ran long trains and never really ran through the weeds until the toward the very end.. What it had was a lot of relatively well maintained "native earth" ballast with some occasional rock and cinder patches. When I first saw the line in 1960 it was a pretty decent piece of railroad with good line and surface, appropriate for the long trains it was handling. Not much rock ballast but a well kept roadbed for the most part. There was some weed encroachment but my pix tend to suggest a lot of weeds were the exception rather than the rule. What was really noticeable were the bare tie ends protruding, which only later did I find was the proper profiling to allow "native earth" ballast to drain. One exception was the Silverton branch between Durango and Hermosa which truly was a through the weeds operation until it was raised above the river marsh land as part of the Silverton tourist train improvements.

JBWX



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2018 03:06PM by John West.