I just thought I would pass this along in case there are others like me who didnt know about it. I spent some enjoyable time going through it.
…Yes, I’ve looked at that sight some time ago simply because it is an interest of mine…Checked the Pennsylvania list and I could add some to the list from my home area. Various ex. B&O branches that carried thousands of tons of coal out of the area to market, etc…Some abandoned as long ago as 60 years and then some even more years than that…Example: PW&S RR. {Not a coal hauler}. Timber and passengers.
Amazing, this is the exact type of website I was looking for. Thanks A lot.[:D]
There’s a Yahoo Group that goes along with that group, abandonedrailroadsoftheus. I used to be a member, but cut that one off when I had a time crunch and couldn’t find time to read the messages anymore.
Very cool. Thanks for the website!!
Wallyworld, thanks for letting us know about this site. Boy do I like it. I answers a lot of my questions.
Thanks
Zak
It’s been on my “favorites” for quite some time now.
Great Site.
Brian (KY)
I have always been intrigued by old railroad grades that have been left intact. In the agricultural regions, they are quickly obliterated as the land is reclaimed, however, in the northern forest regions, many grades remain undisturbed. The Keweenaw Peninsula of northern Michigan is just crawling with old railroad grades. I once hiked the seven miles of the old LacLabel & Calumet RR. In some places, it is like a super highway through the forest. There is something about these old roadbeds that carries me back to the days they were in operation.
I like to take a metal detector out on them and look for buried artifacts. Every old railroad bed is littered with iron. There is nothing likely to be of any intrinsic value, but like the roadbeds themselves, the old iron speaks about the past. Ninety percent of what I find are track parts; spikes, track bolts / nuts, angle bars, chunks of rail, etc. The other ten percent can be anything; locomotive or rolling stock parts, brake shoes, journal box covers, link and pin coupling pins, etc. These artifacts can easily be over 100 years old.
Many parts common in the modern era, such as journal box covers, were made in a wide variety of styles 100 years ago. Some were cast iron with legends cast into them. All of this old iron has a wonderful patina and a very primitive appearance. Much of it is wrought iron and reveals its crude composition in the open breaks common to many artifacts. Some artifacts have all sorts of unique features, but remain impossibly defiant to identification.
…My interest in the old rail grades is to see just how the surveyors got the route through certain obstacles and still maintain a useable gradient. Some of the sites that are pictured with the rails still in place and all kinds of growth make it more interesting yet…
Know of a B&O branch in home area of Pennsylvania that still has track to a mining town and is so overgrown I doubt rails will ever be taken up. It’s almost a forest grown up over it now.