Rail roads and their tracks.

[Hay Dude]

And what does someone do with track plates?????

Conversation piece?:laughing:

 

[wheelbuilder]

This has certainly been a popular thread, mostly about abandon RR lines and roundhouses. No one is interested in rail weights???

My property sits right along an old trolley line. No tracks for over 80 years, but you can easily see it on Google maps. The local library has a good book about it as well. Walking along the line I find few relics at this point.

My Dad lives by active tracks. He uses track plates my Grandad dragged home as ballast on his lawn tractor.

 

[Hay Dude]

Some more from my area. I am a big fan of walking abandoned rails. Many times I wish I could bring a metal detector, but Im sure lots of pieces of worthless steel. One of my favorite finds are the colorful glass electrical wire insulators. These are part of the washed away Penn Central in Ivy Mills, PA. The Newlin Gristmill owns the property and allows a park & walk along the line as well as a tour of the mill, which is still open as a historical landmark.

A little further south, there was a 3-4 mile spur (locals called it a “tramway”) which led to a Feldspar mine which closed in 1910. A friend of mine owns land the tram line went through and finds pieces of rail debris in his lawn all the time.
The Feldspar mines are now lakes.

 

[BoylermanCT]

844 has 84 inch drivers. It was designed for passenger service and has a design speed of 100mph. A few years ago, my uncle tried to stay with it as it headed north of Laramie, westbound. He was doing 85mph on old hwy 30, but 844 was pulling away. 4014 was designed to pull freight and was designed for much slower speeds.

We had no problem chasing 4014 in September. Max speed was around 40mph or so. There was a line of 40-50 cars chasing it. We'd get a head, pull over for pics and videos as it went by and begin chasing it all over again. My dad and I had a great time doing it.

 

[MossRoad]

And what does someone do with track plates?????

My sister uses one for a jewelry anvil.

 

[MossRoad]

Some more from my area. I am a big fan of walking abandoned rails. Many times I wish I could bring a metal detector, but Im sure lots of pieces of worthless steel. One of my favorite finds are the colorful glass electrical wire insulators. These are part of the washed away Penn Central in Ivy Mills, PA. The Newlin Gristmill owns the property and allows a park & walk along the line as well as a tour of the mill, which is still open as a historical landmark.

A little further south, there was a 3-4 mile spur (locals called it a 鍍ramway? which led to a Feldspar mine which closed in 1910. A friend of mine owns land the tram line went through and finds pieces of rail debris in his lawn all the time.
The Feldspar mines are now lakes.

My father-in-law and I used to walk down an abandoned right of way owned by the NJI&I (Singer Sewing Machines) to go ice fishing, then take a spur off about a half a mile that ended in a lake. The lake was a peat quarry. The ties were still there as was a trestle out into the lake. However, all of it was about 6" underwater. Kinda neat.

Around here, most abandoned lines had their tracks taken up fairly quickly. The only one that didn't was a line running out of South Bend, IN to the University of Notre Dame. They used it to haul coal in originally. Then they started trucking it in when a bridge over the river became unstable. The rails sat there for well over 20 years, until about 5-7 years ago a company came in and removed all of the rails, ties, and ballast. Interestingly, after the line was abandoned, the coal would be hauled into South Bend, and dumped at the NJI&I roundhouse. They'd load it onto trucks and drive it up to the university and dump it. ND kept a rail line from their power plant to the coal pile, about 1/4 mile long. They had several hopper cars and a little engine. They'd drive the hoppers out to the pile. A front end loader would load a conveyor to fill the cars, then they'd drive the cars back to the power plant and dump them. They finally ditched the train for dump trucks. And just this year they stopped using coal altogether. They had a caboose and a large crane there as well. I believe they scrapped everything, except sent the caboose to a local rail museum in North Judson.

 

[ArlyA]

Our internet connection is getting slowed, apparently by so many people now being at home. Photos of large sized take to long to be DLed so we'll not be looking at them.

 

[the old grind]

And what does someone do with track plates?????

I've been renting some of mine out as art models, but just can't find work for all of 'em. :confused3:

 

[dragoneggs]

If you could only go back in time... I talked to a old time farmer years ago and when he was a child they would walk the tracks and pick up the coal that fell off the train to bring home for the stove...

I guess we were not quite that desperate, we used to put pennies on the track to smash them and spend the rest of the afternoon hunting for worthless coins. :laughing:

 

[dragoneggs]

This has certainly been a popular thread, mostly about abandon RR lines and roundhouses. No one is interested in rail weights???

Hey I finished my investigation with the help of BukitCase posting my findings in the 'where you buy your metal stock' thread apparently killing the thread with boring details. :laughing: Thought about posting it here but the thread (tracks) were obviously leading somewhere else.

https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums...o-you-buy-your-12.html?highlight=#post5686522