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Rocks: Railway


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Usually gabbro or dolerite is used. It is a coarser grained basalt type rock. I wouldn't use rock from the railway tracks as it will have been sprayed with herbicides and be otherwise contaminated.

merjo

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Using these rocks in your tank is a bad idea for the following reasons:

1. As merjo mentioned they are covered in all kinds of sprays, oil and grease.

2. Taking them from the rail corridor is theft.

3. They play a very important role where they are, and taking them may endanger people's lives.

4. Going near tracks is not only stupid, but trespassing.

If you really want to re-create an underwater railway go to a landscape supplies outlet and buy something similar, it wont cost you much. Look at what just happened in spain.... you are likely to attract a lot of attention of the wrong kind if you are seen snooping around railway property at the moment.

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Can anyone suggest a place (Southern Sydney area) where to purchase these sorts of rocks?

I personally have never seen them for sale in a nursery, or landscapers, not that I frequent the later very often.

Craig

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Guest Gutty
Can anyone suggest a place (Southern Sydney area) where to purchase these sorts of rocks?

I personally have never seen them for sale in a nursery, or landscapers, not that I frequent the later very often.

Craig

The unused rail line at Loftus..... laugh.gif

Would be worth a call to Bexley Caringbah sand supply(Taren point). They do alot of different rocks and may have something similar.

Lata

Matt

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We have our own quarries that mill these rocks. They are made to specifications for the work they are meant to do so I doubt that you will be able to get them exactly the same from anyone else. We do also mill for other things like 10mm gravel also known as your standard Blue Metal gravel.

We call it ballast and it is made with sharp edges so that when it is vibrated by the passage of a train it locks together and supports the track. Bad ballast is smooth and vibrates away from under the track and can cause a derailment. That's why we close the lines down for maintenance, so we can put new ballast down, among other things. We even have a machine that vibrates the rocks and track to lock the rocks into place

Just for everyone's information, the Indian Pacific dumps toilet waste straight onto the track so I would be real careful.

We also use 1500v DC which is returned to the sibstation via the rails. One flash and your ash

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That sounds like it is hygenic Cichlids_Au! Dropping logs onto the tracks! ohmy.gifohmy.gifohmy.gif

G-Styles Call up a landscape supply place and ask for "blue metal". Bad idea to be doing anything near railway tracks ATM.

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To answer the earlier question, if you can wash pesticides off, well, I would say no!

You probably can, but.... from my own experience, it will take an enormous amount of time and washing, and I personally would never trust that sort of material ever again.

When we set up our racks, we used some pipe that we had stored outside a fair way from our extension building site. The pest extermination people must have sloshed some of their poisons around, because we lost 150 electric yellow fry, that were ready to be sold. It was terrible. The piece of pipe had been washed through for weeks with 4 waterchanges of 1000 l of water each and nothing we could do would stop the poison from leaching out. Three more water changes and 3 more sacrificial fish (sorry!) later, we decided that there was no way to use that pipe and we took everything apart and started on that rack again. A horrible experience. And that was just pesticides, not to mention anything else that goes onto those rocks.

Oh, and yes, theft is never a really good idea. I am not even sure if I would like evenly formed rocks in my tank, especially those with sharp edges, where the fish might cut themselves. You must be able to buy basalt somewhere though.

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That sounds like it is hygienic Cichlids_Au! Dropping logs onto the tracks!
It was once the case for all trains traveling on the network, Interurban and Country. All with the exception of the Indian and the Gahn have been converted. Those two trains have hysterical significance rolleyes.gif Did I say hysterical I meant historical lolol. It is certainly something I include in my risk assessment prior to taking people on track.

If you’re in the Martins Creek or Ardglen areas you could always approach the quarry directly.

Yes I'm a Railwayman and have been for the last 27 years

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