Apparatus for removing, cleaning and replacing railroad ballast

Abstract

A device for removing, cleaning and replacing railroad ballast on a railway road bed comprises a chassis mounted on endless treads, the chassis carrying a bucket elevator at its forward end, that scoops up the ballast and discharges it onto a device that cleans the ballast by removing oversized and undersized particles and dirt. The cleaned pebbles of the ballast then fall to a conveyor belt which moves forwardly to deposit them again on the railway road bed in advance of the treads. The bucket elevator is mounted for horizontal swinging movement about a fixed vertical axis on the chassis; and the conveyor belt is similarly mounted; but the vertical axis of the conveyor belt is in advance of that of the bucket elevator, and the forward end of the conveyor belt is pivotally interconnected about a vertical axis with the bucket elevator for horizontal swinging movement with and relative to the bucket elevator. In this way, the cleaned ballast is evenly distributed over the area swept by the bucket elevator.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.