Wanted to start an off-topic chat about cool pieces of railroad history people here own. Figure I’d start!
This is one of the cooler things I own. My dad picked this up at a train show in OKC 12-15 years ago. It is an old bridge sign that was on the ATSF, no clue where. Hoping to get this hung up on the wall again soon.
I have a small piece of 1-1 track from the Tyne & Wear Metro. The Track Maintenance Team were replacing old track and they cut a piece off the redundant track.
I have the Penn Central logo off the end of the last PC passenger train. I had noticed that in typical PC fashion for 1976 it had come loose at one corner from its pop-riveted connection. Now, the last PC train to run in full was the Dinky (PJ&B) car to Princeton Junction, and the return trip was the first Conrail train. As part of the Transportation Program celebration of ‘Last PC Dinky’ (that is my sign in the newspaper photographs) we had taken aboard a full case of Korbel Brut, in technical violation of rule G, and by the time we got back there were only 2 or 3 bottles left. As I recall, Stan Crane was there as the Conrail representative, and as he was getting off the car I asked politely if I could have the loose PC sign as a souvenir. His answer was ‘get that $&@#£€ sign off my car!’ Which I did to general laughter and a few flashbulbs popping…
I also have one of the large purple-and-white 11000-volt warning signs from the original Hell Gate/NYCR electrification – I happened to be in just the right place at the right time when work was being done on that catenary bridge. I have it in storage but expect to find it cleaning out in the next few weeks, and I’ll provide a picture when I do.
I have the bronze train-heat boiler dataplate off one of the last PRSL RS-12s (80mph locomotives holding down the once-‘fastest train in America’ Atlantic City service after dieselization) when it was in a funeral train at Morrisville. I confess I did have to pull one screw the rest of the way out of the rusted lagging to get it free, but it would have been lost otherwise.
That was the first and last time I saw an engine water pump driven by about 20 ordinary fan V-belts in parallel!
LOL I’m so glad you saved the boilerplate that would have dropped and been lost. You’ve got some neat stuff. endmrw0504252047
mine seems tiny compared to what you wrote. 
There’s a whole lot more backstory to that gauge. Notice what it says on the dial? That’s the gauge from a feedwater heater. You could determine the maker and date range from the style; you might even be able to work out the locomotive types and owning roads.
I don’t really have pictures, but I live on a private road that was once part of the Rhinebeck and Connecticut Railroad. After several mergers and purchases the line was owned by the New Haven Railroad. New Haven abandoned the line in 1938 and picked up the tracks in 1939. Apparently, they only took the rails and ties. We are still finding square bolts that have been cut, bolts, and spikes. I have found a piece of rail with two plates bolted to it, rather rusted and very heavy. Once in a while we find the plates that the rail would sit on and the spikes would be driven through. The only reason I think they took the ties is that I have never found any remnants of ties and I have walked nearly half of the section from Silvernails to Rhinecliff. I will see what I can post pictures soon.
Al
The Rhinebeck & Connecticut is one of those railroads like the Philadelphia and Erie that should be much better known. I wonder if any drawings or surveys of the great Hudson River bridge of 1870 were actually made, but that would have been the first high-level crossing, and the line the first direct route between lines in the west and south and New England.
The Poughkeepsie Bridge, further south, was almost two decades later… and interestingly the eastern part of the R&C, which starts much further north and then goes further north still, became part of the original Poughkeepsie Bridge route that was so vital to Archie McLeod’s expansion plans.
I didn’t know that, i’ll look in to it later, I’m at school so I don’t have it on me right now. 
@Woke_Hoagland there was a plan for a railroad bridge over the Hudson River in the area of Rhinecliff. However, funding was never fully realized then the Poughkeepsie Bridge was built. One of the first railroads to buy the R&C I believe (I could be wrong)) was the Poughkeepsie Hartford and Boston railroad. The Central New England purchased that to gain rights to the bridge. The portion I live on is along the western portion of the line which after the construction of the Poughkeepsie Bridge basically became a branch line. I was locally known as the huckleberry line. So named because the train travelled so slow up the hill that passengers could get off and pick the huckleberries and get back on the train. The huckleberries still grow all long the area,
Is the bridge still up? Or is it changed?
It was projected to be built in the early 1870s, before the failure of Jay Cooke in 1873 put the kibosh on foreign bond sales that had made post-Civil War construction easier. The Hudson at that point is fairly wide, and if the banks at Orlot and Rokeby are any guide, the bridge would need to be at high level. In that pre-Angola, pre-Ashtabula era, the resulting bridge might have been terrifyingly spidery and also prone to quick unexpected structural failure…
The Poughkeepsie bridge, when it was built, was spidery enough (New Haven actually gantleted it by 1918, and I think only re-double-tracked it with draconian speed restrictions when diesels on the Maybrook line took over) although there is historical film of a meet on the bridge with the opposing train pulled by an early Mallet articulated. Bridge-building in the United States improved dramatically by the mid-1880s, as did the quality and cost of structural material.
Thanks for the info Woke
I’m fairly certain that it was never re-double tracked, but maintained its gauntlet track until the very end.
As far as memorabilia goes, I have some original nails from the Hopewell Depot in Hopewell Junction, NY, about 13 miles east along the Maybrook from the bridge in Poughkeepsie. I’ll see if I can figure out where I put them and take a picture later.
Wait…
Actual Original Nails???
Yes. Nails hammered into the building in 1873, that were removed to replace burned boards during the building’s restoration.
That’s awesome! 
Actually, the bridge is still there. It hasn’t been a railroad bridge for a long time. Sometime in the late 60’s or early 70’s there was a fire that damaged and burn off the deck of the bridge, The fire department did not have the equipment then to reach the fire. The bridge has been redone is now called the Walkway Over the Hudson.
Oh, really?
Lightbulb!
Where exactly is the bridge? I might go just for a 2 1/2 hour bike ride or a walk 
