imaudigger, post: 429996, member: 7286 wrote: Someone told me that the majority of metal "T" fence posts were all made out of old rail road track.
When I did telecommunication work we had several jobs that removed the old "10 pin" Western Union pole lines that ran for miles along the railroad routes. We would count the conductors and multiply that number by the footage derived from stationing for the salvage footage of the conductors. 99% of them were 14, 16 or 19 ga. zinc pickled steel (not copper). The majority of the contractors that bought up all that salvage wire were wire fence manufacturing companies. If you bought any woven wire field fence between 1970 and 1980 it was probably old WU telemetry conductor.
imaudigger, post: 429996, member: 7286 wrote: Someone told me that the majority of metal "T" fence posts were all made out of old rail road track.
Many of the larger rebars were made of rerolled rails once upon a time. There is even a grade mark that looks like a rail in cross-section to indicate that the bar was rolled from rail steel and isn't new billet steel.
Andy Nold, post: 429910, member: 7 wrote: Lots of adaptive reuse of rails by railroad companies. I was waiting for a train in Tokyo back in February when it dawned on me that the platform cover I was standing under was largely composed of recycled rail. At least seven different pieces in this shot.
Sorry to sidetrack the thread.
Looks like a "Sherman Bowtie" that Union forces made during the War Between the States made to demolish the Southern railroads.
Andy
imaudigger, post: 429996, member: 7286 wrote: Someone told me that the majority of metal "T" fence posts were all made out of old rail road track.
There's a How It's Made show on exactly that
.
Kent McMillan, post: 429875, member: 3 wrote: I'll have to take a look at aerial photos from 1952 again to see whether I'm mistaken as to whether the road was in place then or not.
Just as a footnote, I'll mention that the road pavement does appear in the 1952 aerial photos. It was most likely in place in 1950 when the rail was recovered and in 1950 or 1951 when I think that the concrete was placed with identifying bronze plaque.
A fairly plausble hypothesis is that the rail was cut off with a torch at grade when the concrete was placed and the bury of 15 inches was created when gravel was added to the adjacent road bed over time. That would explain both the rail's weaker magnetic signature at present and the depth at which the thing is now. That is, it was most likely a narrow-gauge rail end that was probably planted so that the top was about 18 to 24 inches above grade with 24 inches in the ground.
The land around that corner was used once upon a time as a sugar cane plantation and what I've described as a narrow-gauge rail may have come from a narrow gauge line that served the plantation internally (although the only railroads that appear on the earliest topo maps of the area from 1910, the Cane Belt and the former G H & S A, were evidently both standard gauge lines. The nearest railroad in 1882 or before would have been the G H & S A Rwy. Co. track that would have been a line carrying standard freight and passenger cars to San Antonio and beyond.
After even further research on the Google, I learn that the rail section shown above is what was known as 30 lb. rail, i.e. weighing 30 lbs. per foot, which would have been an intermediate weight rail in about 1882.
The different railroads published the weights of rails used on their various lines, but I have yet to find a reference to what the G H & S A Rwy Co. used in the vicinity. The track may well have been laid with 30-lb. rails, which would tend to place the origins of that particular rail nearer to 1873 than 1882.
It's always a bit surprising what sorts of details can be found by simply searching Texas court cases. Here is one from 1904 that includes testimony about rail weights. From Bonn v. G H & S A R.R. Co. (1904):
"I am acquainted with the class of rails that are in use and have been in use on the different railroads in Texas for the last thirty-five years, also for the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railroad. I have worked for them.
"The lightest rail they have to the yard is fifty pounds. The heaviest rail is seventy-five pounds, I think, at the present time, I don't know whether they use an eight-two to the yard or not.
"The standard length of rails is thirty feet. I believe that sixty is the lightest they use at the present time on the Galveston Harrisburg and San Antonio during the last twenty years. I believe fifty or fifty-six is the lightest they used."