I had a chance to scrounge out some steel from some abandoned railroad cars the other day. It was kind of funny. I was walking down by the tracks looking for some stuff and a maintainence crew drove by on a rail-truck. They stopped and asked if I found anything good yet and I said no, so they told me there'd been a derailment down the tracks a ways about 4 months ago, and that there were like 3 cars down there that they just left there because it was too much work to recover them. So following their advice I went down there and found a treasure trove. I found about 100 pounds or more of coil springs off the wheel bases. There are two types, big ones and then smaller ones that fit inside the big ones. I have two of the big ones and 4 or 5 of the little ones. I would imagine these are 5160, does anyone know? I also found a bunch of those bolts that they use to pin the splints that hold sections of tracks together, and they had those big lock washers and nuts on them too. I am not sure what those are but its VERY tough steel, must be high manganese stuff, cause most rail steels seem to have tons of that in them. Then I found a bunch of spikes and a couple thick pieces of plate steel. My final find was two panels from the sidewall of the train that had been cut out to remove the cargo. There was still rotting corn everywhere from the derailment, and the panels were lying in that so they didn't smell that good, but they are gonna become helmets and thus that nasty smell and paint will get burned off. The only thing I'm really disappointed about is the fact that I could not find any small chunks of rail. The maintainence guys didn't think there was any along there anywhere and they passed by the wreck twice and still hadn't seen anything. A shame too, cause I really wanted a piece of rail to make a T stake out of for armoring... I did get a connector pin for the wheelbase though, that should make at least the post for a ball stake..
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Railway steels...
- Thread starter Dangus
- Start date
- Joined
- Dec 2, 1999
- Messages
- 9,910
Use some of the train parts to make a nice knife and scrimshaw a train wreck on the ivory grip! Wouldnt that look cool?
- Joined
- Nov 6, 1999
- Messages
- 419
My anvil (used mostly for pinning rather than forging) is a slab of oversize railroad track. Super stuff.
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2000
- Messages
- 658
Sounds familiar. Last Sunday I put in 14 hours at a local rail siding loading boxcars from rail flats onto truck chasies. Between loads I wandered up and down the siding. The days score was 24 of the HC stamped spikes and a two foot chunk of rail.
Great! I just got back from a ren fest and I was up all last night making armor(I'll get pictures later!). Anyhow, I really need some track, I need to make a T stake out of it, in fact I will give ya the plans too
I have a sister in Ok, so I'll have to email you and see if you are close, otherwise we can figure something out. I'm in Iowa. Anyhow, later when I'm more alive I'll send you an email....