A friend found these about 15 years ago surveying along about a 2 mile stretch of abandoned railroad spur in the Chicago area. He had to pull these out with a railroad spike. He says the 09 might actually be a 60. Enjoy.
Date nails are pretty cool. Personally I like to leave them in place unless the pole is down.
I have used them to support standard framing nails set as corner references in power or telephone poles.
> Personally I like to leave them in place unless the pole is down.
I've seen them in utility poles, but I've found far more in railroad ties. I think that's where the nails in the photo came from.
Kevin,
That's awful nice of you to leave them. When I worked for Pacific Power and Light we sometimes used the date nail to look up the year of the easement or r/w document.
Pablo
Very nice, Brad, thank you.
I'm an admirer of date nails, but not an aficionado. What does the "X" signify?
10 , I'm guessing.
Don
I think I once heard that the X nails were placed in switches or spurs and sidings, because those ties had heavier usage.
They look like little branding irons! Nice collection.
Too bad those date nails are not manufactured anymore. They would be convenient for the field guys.
Most of those are from the Santa Fe Railroad. The "X" were placed in defect ties that had a split or something in them so the section men knew there was already something wrong with them.
I have a collection of about 5,000+ railroad and pole nails (all different). I started collecting and trading nails in the 1980's and belonged to a club that is dedicated to this hobby.
Like barbed wire (I have over 300 different strands) the date nail hobby is waning, but I used to sell some good ones for $300 each back in the 1990's. I also had to pay good money for certain dates or styles. There were many steel companies all making date nails and each had a specific maker mark on the shank or different numeral style. That is how I know thee are Santa Fe nails in the picture. Plus, the Santa Fe was one of the few railroads to use the X nails.
Each year there is a date nail swap meet. This year's meet is in Marceline, Missouri on May 2-3.
Jerry posted something about how to date the ties without the nails sometime back. There was a series of drill holes, similar to how the "born on date" exists in a hard hat or other safety gear. It was REALLY cool. I jacked it and shared it on Facebook. A link to the thread is here
I suppose you have other collections as well? Bottles..insulators?
Bottles, insulators, barbed wire, bottle caps, highway road maps, various other maps, railroad switch keys, photo postcards, rifle cartridges, duck decoys, survey monuments, matchbooks, WWII relics, model trains, deer antlers, beer cans, traps, coins, candy bar wrappers, fossils, arrowheads, railroad timetables, porcelain fence signs, old books, and a bunch of other things. I think if there was more than one of something I have probably collected it at one time or another.
I am in the process of moving and it has really highlighted the obsession of my years of collecting stuff.
I KNEW IT!
I have a friend who's dad was a "collector" (different from a hoarder). He passed away years ago. At any rate, I had the privilege (not being sarcastic)of checking out his collections. I could spend days in there looking at his stuff.
I couldn't even begin to list all of the stuff he had collected. It was all fairly well organized in a 2 story barn/shop. The general rule of thumb, if it was considered collectable - he had a collection. Lots of collections of things we no longer use.
Then there were the ordinary things like coffee cans of old hinges, or dozens of tire pressure gauges. If the power ever went out, you would never have to go to town for years.
In the 70's I had a large collection of bottle caps. I'm not sure what happened to it, but it's probably long gone.
Be careful. It sounds like it's guilty until proven innocent.
Result of sharing a collection publically
All of our file shelves are put together with these that my father collected throughout the years. The P&L railroad used to have these in their old railroad ties. An antique shop close has buckets full of them for sale at $1 per nail.