I thought i'd post this to see if anyone else here has ever found or seen any of these marbles. The only referance to them on the web i could find was at:

http://www.railroadiana.org/hw/pgMarbles.php

wich i thought was rather interesting on the usage of them in freight houses and depots to move freight and also in the bottoms of sand hoppers to help with the flow of sand while emptying.
It mentions that they were first used bewteen 1885-1890 and that a RR official wanted a marble that could carry 500 lbs. of weight.

About 10 years or so ago while walking a old B&O RR grade near Greenfield, Ohio with a friend he found one along the embankment at a bridge site in the ballast. At the time i didn't think anything of it. A few years after that along the same old B&O RR line over near Hamden, Ohio and on one of the few and last times i could ever drag my wife along for a walk she found one of the same kind of light green marbles in the ballast, i thought what's with these marbles along RR tracks?

Last month my uncle passed away and my son and i were over at his house yesterday going thru some things and down in the basement and on a shelf i found a box full of several hundred of these RR marbles. Not sure as to where he ever got them from?

Most on here probably think what's the big deal it's just marbles and i realize they probably aren't worth anything at all anyhow. The concept of them being used to move freight is what i find interesting as the website mentions that 2 one inch lathes were laid on the floors as tracks parallel to one another and the marbles were spread on the floor filling the space between them and freight that required moving was pushed onto the roadbed of marbles and rolled along to it's new location.

This also got me wondering if any RR museums have any type of small exhibit demonstrating this? Ok, so maybe i'm just loosing my marbles!

There were lots of these around central PA.. We were told - now I was pretty young - that these were the raw material for a couple places that spun fiberglass insulation? There was a plant in Huntingdon,PA. Made excellent projectiles for our slingshots at any rate

I've found a few on the old CNJ Southern Division in South Jersey as well.

I used to have a few around here that were picked up back in the 1970's after a minor derailment in downtown Arlington, TX on the (then) Texas & Pacific

I, too, have:

1) found these in central Pa. trackside/in the ballast;

2) been told by crews that they were raw-glass material shipping.

Think a minute. Where's a big source of glass-grade sand? Southern New Jersey (or at least it was). What big industry was in Corning, NY and environs?

I have worked in the ceramics industry and also was told that this is raw glass. They go directly to a furnace, melted, for pressing glass products. Sand, silica, Si02 is only one componant of glass and not the highest percentage item. The end manufacturer may not have the space, time or machinery to compound the glass and then send it down the line for pressing. I remember picking these glass marbles in the harbor around Los Angeles.

They are indeed raw glass. The Owens-Corning (Now Advanced Glassfibre Yarns) plant in Huntingdon, PA is one receiver of them. They used to get them by the boxcar load. Now it's shipped by truck instead. The loading dock just west of the plant had rail and truck access.

This....

...."They are indeed raw glass. The Owens-Corning (Now Advanced Glassfibre Yarns) plant in Huntingdon, PA is one receiver of them. They used to get them by the boxcar load."....

should put this disinformation to rest.....

from Railroadiana online
....as the story goes....Marbles were purchased by the tons and used in the freight houses and depots. Two one inch lathes were laid as tracks parallel to one another and the marbles were spread, filling the space between them. Freight that required moving was pushed up onto the "roadbed of marbles" and rolled along to its new location. Remember the planks in the flooring of these depots and freight stations were of white pine three inches thick and fourteen inches wide.

The thought that this idea would even work is absurd. Who dreamt that up?

That would be like finding the little taconite "marbles" laying along the tracks on lines carrying them and claiming those were railroad bearings....

B.O.:

I'm rather curious as to exactly how you reached that conclusion?

Yes, we have established that round glass spheres are one of the methods used to ship the raw materials for glass production.

How does that information prove that round glass spheres were not also used for other purposes? Using the same logic, I could say that it also disproves the rumors that children used to play with small glass spheres and called them marbles. Obviously, that is incorrect, since they're raw materials for glass production!

I will grant that the marbles are freight station ball bearings is rather odd, and I've never heard of it before. It would also seem likely that the vast majority of marbles found along rail lines are these raw materials.

However, I don't think that we can disprove that they were ever used in freight stations simply based on the fact that raw glass was shipped as marbles. There were plenty of unusual things tried over the years, some worked, some did not.

It certainly makes more sense that the marbles found along R.R. right of ways are the raw material used for glass production that simply fell out of freight cars while in transit. I'd like to know where Mr. Ferrara obtained his information used for his article on railroad marbles on the Railroadiana Online website.

If the story has any truth and they were first used between 1885- 1890 we know they didn't have forklifts for moving large crates and such at freight terminals or freight houses back then. Soooo how exactly did they move these large heavy items?

From my experiance moving some large heavy RR items around while on or off a trailer,on the ground such as some big heavy signal cabinets or heavy sandstone milemarkers ect. when no equipment was available, nothing beats throwing several short lengths of 2" pipe under the item to roll and move things with some ease.

This moving freight with marbles sounds possible and it does work well on a small scale as i tried it moving a small wood box filled with 10 lbs. of weight between 2 pcs. of lathe nailed to a pc. of plywood with marbles laid out between the lathe yesterday. You not only get forward and backward movement with ease with little effort but you can also turn side to side. it just doesn't seem like it would be worthwhile doing this across the floor of a freight house for any distance as you would need thousands of marbles thrown on the floor! Then think of the clean-up afterwards or the possiblity of even injury if a worker would accidently step on a marble and fall!

Is there any other known documentation of marbles being used by R.R.s over 100 years ago to move heavy items around in freight houses or box cars?

I totally agree, as I noted: "It would also seem likely that the vast majority of marbles found along rail lines are these raw materials."

Much more logical explanation for marbles along the track, especially at this late date, I'm not disputing that. I also agree that the whole thing sounds rather far fetched, but not impossible.

On a side note, I read the description to sound like they had troughs, kind of like rails, and would guess they simply left the marbles in place. As for it being hazardous, yes, it would be. However, I recall visiting a milk distribution facility with my grandfather, and they had roller equipped conveyors going every which way, or so it seemed. They were probably also dangerous. (I really wanted to ride on them, thus inadvertently re-inventing the original style of roller coaster, but they didn't think that was such a good idea...)

So, yes, it is implausible at best. I just don't know that I agree that establishing most glass marbles are raw materials also disproves that marbles were ever used in freighthouses in the manner described.

Well, not that much new under the sun is there ?

Lots of modern "material handling" systems use the "new" version of this idea;

http://www.mcmaster.com/#5674k1/=qc8sax

If you fill up a platform with these you can easily "skate" heavy stuff around. In fact they are widely used in the air freight (Fed-Ex, UPS, (tm)) business. Many of the lifts that are used to slide custom airplane sized containers off the plane, to the sorting building and then back onto the plane are covered with these fixed "marbles". They make a floor plate with holes that allow just the top 1/4" (or so) of the marble to be exposed. And they make the "pitch" between marbles so about 80% of your foot is always on "Terra firma" so you (with a flexible foot) can actually walk quite safely over the surface. And the rigid bottom surface of the container "scoots" along with just one or two people pushing/steering.

I believe these could have been used to move crates around, and they could also be raw material for glass plants (if you "chop" off a blob of molten glass it will tend to form a sphere before it cools). Maybe they are both ?

In the aerospace industry we routinely use "air cushions" underneath fragile payloads (a simple plastic skirt around the edges of a metal platform with a little air supply (10 psi, times a couple hundred square inches)) will easily let you push it around on a smooth sealed concrete floor. Actually easier than wheeled casters, you can change direction any which way you desire just by pushing, and it's a lot cleaner (if the floor and air are clean). Just a "high-tech" hovercraft.

Cheers, Kevin.

We were finding them in the mid to late 1960's.
This was on sidings near a couple of coal tipples (bituminous) near Philipsburg/Morrisdale, PA
What I think happened, was that these were "leftovers" in the possum bellies of the Hopper Cars, and this material was what was in the bottoms when they were cleaning them out of the previous material-- i.e. glass/taconite/ Anthracite Coal/Scrap
Later in life I worked at a coal tipple, and we had to inspect and clean every car. All kind of leftover material in the car bottoms

"Marbles were purchased by the tons and used in the freight houses and depots".... Come on, now.... I was born at night, but not last night!



This is what they'd use to move crates in and around a dock or boxcar. The long handled one is good for big stuff.

I say the explanation the article gave was just wishful thinking on the authors part trying to create a connection between an interesting find and the location it was found in. There is no logical way to use these marbles in that capacity in a railroad atmosphere. What's to become of them when not in use? They are brittle.... the examples cited of modern use of that principle use steel ball bearings, which are nested on smaller balls beneath them in a cup... they are captive. The glass balls wouldn't last for any time at all by the time they roll onto a rough concrete floor.

And the part about.... "These marbles were used by the Pennsylvania Sand Company on the main line up into Berkley. The larger marbles were put into the bottom of the sand hoppers to help the flow of the sand when emptying." is a little hard to believe, also.

But, I am all ears if someone can come up with actual proof.

All someone had to do was witness the opening of a carload of sand where the remnants of the last load hadn't been cleaned out and that story was started.

I have very definite memories of a quarry that put steel punch press scrap in the hoppers specifically so the ballast WOULDN'T come out... Grumble, grumble...