Another - What Is It?

Can anybody identify this piece of equipment recently posted on the "Fallen Flags" website?

NYC MWE - Unknown - e50s - {Robert Colvig Photo}

http://gelwood.railfan.net/nyc/nyc-mwe-arc.jpg

Ill take a swag at it, When looking at the picture you can see that the machine is on an unballasted section of track, which would lead me to believe it is a machine used to spike the rail to the ties. Chief Troll would be the one to ask for the proper answer.

It looks something like a ballast-tamper-spreader to me. It appears to have stopped where the dumped ballast ran out (notice difference in ballast in front of and behind machine).

I think it's a "Perlmanator"

See the horizontally mounted rollers on the end? What would that be for? The don't look like buffers, but moving parts.

Dieter.

It looks to me like a "Cribber", judging by the screen on the tie end, and that the ballast beyond the machine seems to be disturbed. A cribber like this would have been used in advance of anchor application to ease the anchor installation process.

I am almost positive it is not a tamper or ballast regulator.

It's a Pullman Power Track Ballaster, an early design of a tamper, built by Pullman Standard Car Co. This model dates back to the late 1940's, I think (which dates me, too . . ) The "roller" looking things are actually air cylinders.

The machine had two sets of heavy "jaws" that were normally raised above the tie. Each set could tamp under one rail, and they were commonly used together to tamp the entire tie. The jaws were opened in the raised position and then they were released to crash down on the ballast in the cribs, alongside the faces of the tie. Then hooks on a set of chains, IIRC, would raise the jaws for another shot on that or the next tie.

The last time I ran one of these was in 1963 at Selkirk Yard. By then, most tampers worked on a vibratory principal, but the Pullman was good for stuffing cinders, oak leaves and branches under the ties. We called it the Pullman Stomper.

If you Google "Pullman Tamper," you will come up with an Australian device for tamping coffee into an espresso machine. I wonder if they got the name from this thing.

Thank you ChiefTroll.

Chief Troll, I had heard about these "PS Stompers", thanks for the information! This is the first one I have seen, either in photos or in action. I did not see any vibrator motors in this photo, so I figured that it couldn't have been used as a tamper. I am guessing that one of the reasons this type of power "tamping" did not last is that the ballast was really not compacted all that well directly under the tie, is that true?

CHIEF TROLL beat me to the punch.....Last saw/worked one of these varmints during yard reconstruction in '64 at SHARONVILLE OHIO....darned thing was slower than frozen molasses, and did a poor job. NYC had pretty much quit using them, especially in the BIG GANGS acct low productivity, and relegated them to just SPOT TAMPING..High MTCE also, and difficult to keep in service. LAB

. . . I am guessing that one of the reasons this type of power "tamping" did not last is that the ballast was really not compacted all that well directly under the tie, is that true?

. . . It depends on the type of ballast, and the amount of raise. The Pullman seemed to work OK at stuffing cinders, small gravel, oak leaves and branches under the ties, but it wouldn't move good rock ballast to where you wanted it. That's why it was being used on the yard tracks in old Selkirk.

By the way, the "Oak leaves and branches" is a direct quote from John Flannery, Track Supervisor at Minerva, OH in 1966. We had a gathering in the Division Engineer's Office in Cleveland one Sunday night, while we were waiting for No. 6 to take us to Albany for the annual Maintenance of Way Seminar at Jug End Barn in Mass.

Frank Diego, at Marcy, had a gon full of what he said were "Oak leaves and branches." He was wondering what to do with it, because the LE&P had just been taken out of service and we had no access to Gateman's Dump.

John Flannery said, "Send the car to Minerva. We use that stuff for ballast." Such were the good old days.

By the way, the gentleman who organized those seminars, which were very useful for all of us, told me that he started on the New York Central setting stakes ahead of a Pullman Track Ballaster on the Michigan Central. After that, he served as an Artillary officer in WW II, so the Ballasters were around before 1945, at the latest. Larry B knows of whom I speak.

I have a 1937 Maintenance of Way Cyclopaedia, which shows nearly every M of W machine available at the time, as well as most types of track material. The Pullman Ballaster isn't listed or advertised. Pullman-Standard had a pretty good advertising budget, so if it's not in the book it didn't exist yet.

GAD!