Ballast Regulator - Laurinburg & Southern Railroad - Railroad Maintenance-Of-Way Equipment on Waymarking.com

This is a waymark for this ballast regulator used on the L&S tracks. This railroad is a short line railroad that was formerly owned by a local family. It was sold some time ago to other interest. I worked for the local family on this railroad as brakeman, flagman, and conductor for a couple of years. We ran approximately 27.6 miles from Raeford NC to Johns Station, NC. We had connections with the Aberdeen and Rockfish RR (A&R) in Raeford and the CSX at the Dixie siding in East Laurinburg. We serviced a few local industries such as Dixie Guano Fertilizer, LOF Glass (now Pilkington Glass), JP Stevens, Rae Magnet Wire and Raeford Salvage. Those were some good times railroading. With seeing this machine again more railroading memories returned. It was a cold February morning and we were taking ballast cars (open hopper cars with ballast (rocks)) to the glass plant spur for the section crew. I was sitting up on the motor with the Jerry Lee just watching the action. Mr. Jones the GM for the railroad came up on the motor and told me to get up in ballast car with the section crew to help break the ballast loose. It was frozen in the car and would not come out the bottom doors of the car. With long steel pry bars, we beat and banged the frozen ballast until it finally was loose enough to flow out. A large cross tie was placed behind a set of the wheel trucks of the car and was used to rough spread the ballast. I knew one thing that day and that was if I was relegated to this too many times my railroad career was going to be shorter than Casey Jones' and no where near as illustrious. Fortunately, this was a very rare event in my career as a railroad man. After the ballast was out of the car, the regulator came in with its spreader blades and heavy rotating tines to even out the ballast. The area where the ballast regulator is kept is just off the main line in a wye track area. This section of track rarely sees action now. If visiting the area, one can park at the convenience store at the intersection of US 501 N and the RR track. A short walk, south, beside the track takes one to the site. The company does not run on weekends and as reported above rarely operates on this section of track. Most of the track in this area is used for railcar storage.

Is this a display or a maintenance facility location?: Maintenance Facility Are there any fees and if so how much? (optional): none Website about this MOW waymark. (optional): [Web Link] Additional site related to the MOW category. (optional): [Web Link]

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Date Logged Log User Rating   06/20/2010 NCDaywalker visited it