Rock Springs, WI: Stone, including "Pink Lady" Ballast, Quarry

(Satellite)

Gary Lenz posted three photos with the comment: "Rock Springs Quartzite - Pink Lady Quarry. Rock Springs, Wisconsin. Photos - Early 1980's."

[It was flooded in 2008 and it was shutdown.]
Dennis DeBruler Has it been reopened? Or is it located somewhere else?
https://www.google.com/.../@43.4889395,-89.../data=!3m1!1e3
Gary Lenz Dennis- the quarry operators with a portable crusher and hauls loads out by truck. All the Rail loading equipment has been removed.

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Gary Lenz commented on his post
All the equipment for loading rail cars is gone now.

Gary Lenz commented on his post
Gary Jung Yeah, when Martin Marretia left they took it all away. Definitely spelled the name wrong.

GeoScience
434-11: Rock Springs, WI at the southern end of Ableman Gorge on the north limb of the Baraboo Syncline. The Pink Lady quarry at the upper left of the photo produces quartzite that is used for ballast between railroad ties. The Chicago and Northwestern Railroad parallels the Baraboo River that cuts diagonally across the photo. (9May99)

The oldest rocks in this county are the Proterozoic rocks of the Baraboo syncline, ranging from 1.75 billion year old granite and rhyolite, through the famous 1.65 billion year old Baraboo quartzite to a poorly exposed iron formation that was once mined. The quartzite stood as resistant bluffs, pounded by Cambrian storm waves. It is a classic area, with many outcrops visited by thousands of geologists and geology students because many basic principles of structural geology can be illustrated. Cambrian storm wave debris is also beautifully exposed in several places, most notably Parfery's Glen. Quartz crystals and hematite clusters are known where the quartzite is quarried for crushed and building stone.
Much of the county is underlain by Cambrian sandstone. These are well exposed along the Dells of the Wisconsin River, a popular tourist attraction. In thew western part of the county, hills are capped by Early Ordovician dolostones, which are also widely quarried, and can yield interesting specimens of drusy quartz, calcite, dolomite and goethite pseudomorphs after pyrite and marcasite. A few sulfide deposits fringing the Upper Mississippi Valley Zinc-Lead district are known.
On the eastern edge of the county, the Johnstown moraine covers the landscape. To the west, the landscape is carved into hills and glens (or "coulees") with significant bedrock outcrop. Gravel in the drift and along bars in the Wisconsin River and its tributaries can yield interesting transported materials such as float copper, granites and other glacial erratics.
[MinDat2]

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I have noticed that BNSF has switched from sedimentary rock to granite for its ballast. I wonder if they get the granite from here or if they haul it from somewhere in the Rocky Mountains where they may serve a granite quarry.

Brian Allen posted a couple of aerial photos. His general comment was "THE "PINK LADY" BALLAST QUARRY ON THE C&NW IN APRIL 1985. MY 1ST ATTEMPT AT AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY"

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The CNW tracks are on the far right side of the photo

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The CNW tracks are in the lower left corner of the photo

A picture of the Sauk County Quarry is Google's choice to represent the city.

Aaron Carlson

Aaron owns either a plane or a drone.

Aaron Carlson

Bing shows the quarry full of water, but Google shows it dry. The comments on Brian's posting did indicate the quarry had been closed. Since Bing is usually a few years older than Google, does that mean the quarry has been reopened? (Update: yes but with truck, instead of rail, service.)

Biran Allen in Rock Springs, WI, posted
C&NW SD45 #917 in the 1980s

Update: I normally don't bother with pictures of locomotives because there are so many of them on the net. I knew that SD45's had 20-cylinder prime movers. The largest number of cylinders ever used in locomotives. It must have taken some serious horsepower to move the rock. From Jim Shaw's comment I learned that very few SD45's came without dynamic brakes. But these were some of them. That would explain why the angled part does not have a grill. That is were the resistor grid for the dynamic brakes would be installed. A grill was needed so that fans could blow air over the resistors to keep them cool.

Gary Lenz posted two photos with the comment: "CNW Power - Pink Lady Quarry . Rock Springs , Wisconsin . 1985"
Brandon Steinbach We camped at Devil’s Lake I’m the South Shore back when you could camp by the tracks. As a kid, I caught every train I could rumbling though there. Including #1385 coming back and a few circus trains. I had a radio with a cassette recorder and we taped a few trains lumbering through. Then at night my cousin would stand on the tracks with a flashlight and my dad would crank it up and we’d scare people walking down the tracks .....different times back then.
Gregg Bergholz Yep loaded alot of trains there for WSOR
Jaye Baus Dumped a lot of that ballast between Kenosha and Chicago and in Proviso. A real dusty mess.

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Brian Allen posted three photos with the comment:

In April 1985, I had the opportunity to charter a small aircraft, and photograph the Pink Lady Quartzite Quarry in Rock Springs Wisconsin 

The Chicago and North Western Railway operated ballast trains from the Quarry to areas on the C&NW System

Mark Slinde: How far out on the system did the C&NW send and use pink lady for ballast? Was it only IL and WI? Or did it make it as far as Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, etc.?

Joe Gibbs: Mark Slinde it made its way all across Iowa.

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(new window) I believe this video was made in this quarry.

Screenshot
Brandon Steinbach In the 80’s we camped at Devil’s Lake. We watched the ballast trains all the time.