We visited the pocket park on First Street on Friday and saw two things that we wanted to share with you. First, we saw for the first-time solar panels on railroad cars! We just had to find out more about that Herzog Company. We found out that they use the solar panels to charge the batteries on the dumping system. The dumping system automatically opens the dump doors on the cars to discharge ballast a set rate, plus they locate themselves via GPS. The railroad sets up the cars to unload between certain lat-longs and when the train gets there the cars can dump the required amount of ballast automatically. Several major railroads are using this technology. You may be wondering what ballast is. Railroad ballast is one of the most demanding applications for crushed stone. Railroad ballast serves as a bed for railroad tracks and provides track stability, drainage, and support of significant loads carried by railcars. While on First Street, we also observed a new drive up postal mail box that has been located in front of the Town Hall. To our knowledge, this is the only location where you can drive up and mail a letter. After we left First Street, we drove up to the intersection of Maryland Avenue and Route 340. There we saw that the Exxon station is getting its awning replaced. Last week workers were across the street doing the same type of work at the Seven Eleven.
