Linked and below - hopefully - are several photos of a rather unique park bench that I saw this morning. It is along the Ironton Rail-Trail opposite the David Saylor Cement Kiln Museum/ Historic Site in the Borough of Coplay, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania - about 5 miles north of Allentown, on the western side of the Lehigh River there. I wonder why I never thought of this before . . .
The construction is pretty obvious, but I think it’s more complicated than it needs to be. It could be simplified by mounting/ welding a bracket for the seat portion directly to the axle, which would obviously be much sturdier than the pipe arrangement supporting the seat. With most railroad wheel diameters in the 33" to 36" range, the seat height would be about right, or could be adjusted up or down a little bit by whatever the wheels are mounted on. Also, with the seat a little lower on the axle, the wheel tread would then work better as an arm rest - I tried it, and this one is a little too low for comfort, I believe.
I guess a wheelset weighs about a ton or so, so as long as the wheels are welded to a couple of short pieces of rail or some rebar in concrete blocks, a bench constructed this way isn’t going to be moved very easily by kids or vandals . . . [:-^] But it would likely need equipment of some kind to get it to the site and place it.
At current prices for No. 1 Heavy Melting Steel Scrap of around $400 per Gross Ton, it would cost at least that to purchase - maybe twice that with shipping and handling/ unloading and mark-ups
I have a friend and fellow freight-car freak who lives in Coplay–I’m sure he knows about this, as he has accompanied me on bike trips locally.
That wheelset looks like a casting, so it’s pretty old, and definitely 33-inch wheels. They’re set pretty deep into the ground, so I’m not sure how well a bench mounted on the axle would work. To me, it looks like the wheelset doesn’t have to be apart of the bench at all, the way it’s built–but it would still be a deterrant to vandals, who definitely couldn’t make off with it, giving that the supports are also buried (presumably in concrete).
You’re also right about transport and scrap expenses–I doubt that this will be a fad that catches on. Sadly.
Paul; a few days ago I saw a flatrack 18wheeler with wheel sets on boardheaded to Phx. on I-17 at Cordes Jct.~~~ Seeing your pics. I wonderThey looked like the ones in picture ( dirty and rusty ) on the trailer. ~~~ Could be bench seats in the making?? Odd or co- inky -dense LOL Jim[:-^]
I saw similar benches last yr in Roanoke. NS has built a small park area along the tracks downtown, w/ various RR artifacts including some benches like this. It was right across the main from the O Winston Link museum. They are pretty cool.
The Illinois Prairie Path, which has been around since the early 1970’s, has CA&E artifacts as a marker of the junction of the Aurora and Elgin branches in Wheaton.
Doublestack and ccltrains - Thanks so much for that info - it was enough to motivate me into some on-line searching, and eventually the links and images below of those benches or similar ones turned up. Notably, they both appear to be of the much simpler and cleaner design arrangement that I suggested in my 1st post above:
From the website for the Victoria History Railroad Park - Victoria was a former division point on the Virginian Railway, and is pretty much out in rural Virginia about 120 miles west of Norfolk, 100 miles east of Roanoke, and 55 miles southwest of Richmond, near Crewe on the N&W:
That is a good website - although captions for the several photos at the bottom would be much more informative - and an interesting and seemingly active park. I ha
