Until about three years ago when Orange Empire relaid its "bookstore curve" the curve was laid with 62-1/2 lb. English rail with a roll date of something like 1887. This rail was pulled up from an old siding serving a former winery in late 1967 and relaid the following year at Perris [the first projects I worked on as an 18-year old member of the Museum].

As far as I know the rail was moved into storage at the rear of the museum.

Elsewhere on the property, I have seen rail with roll dates in the 'teens.

Here in Healesville, Australia, at the Yarra Valley Railway most of our yard is still 60lb Krupp rail which was laid in 1888 when the line was built. This includes about half the switches too.
Our main line is a little newer being relaid with 1910 or so 80lb rails that were recycled when they were too worn out for the suburban lines. This was done during the 1930's.

There is another line about 2 hrs from here, the Victorian Goldfields railway, which is almost all 60lb Krupp from 1883 or so for nearly it's full 11 mile length.

At Ivyland, Pa. on the New Hope & Ivyland RR, I was trying to decide if we had 85 lb. rail rolled in 1890 or 90 lb. rail rolled in 1885! There was some 90 lb. American Society Civil Engineers rail rolled in 1890 by Lackawanna Iron & Steel Co.
The line was built out to Ivyland for the Centennial Exposition in 1876 and extended to New Hope in 1891.

It would be interesting if the 1890 rail is actually marked for the ASCE, as I don't believe their rail standards were adopted until 1893. Then again, the adoption process took time, I'm sure, so I suppose the mills were rolling rails to the new standard dimensions before the standard was even formally adopted.

At the Southern Forest Heritage Museum, our new rail is Tennessee Steel, 60# rolled in 1914. Some portions of the main line still have 1881 56# T&NO pattern, made for the SP eastern lines when they were completed in that year, and some 1887 Joliet, 56# which was acquired second hand in 1919.

The Stewartstown Railroad apparently still has some old metal in the track; photo courtesy of a model railroader in Great Britain who is interested in this line. Note the lack of tie plates--which is how our T-rail was supposed to be used originally:

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/upload ... _thumb.jpg

Source:

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index. ... omsearch=1

I can recall older rail still in service on a line of the B&O that had "1927" as its date; it was still in use, with 100-ton cars running on it, into the 1970s.

A former Cumberland Valley/PRR/Conrail and now Winchester & Western line just down the street from my house has rail in the track now that dates from 1917. This isn't a tourist road, but an increasingly busy shortline that is finally replacing some of that rail.

I remember being in Elizabethton, Pa. some years back, and noting not only rail in Amtrak's Keystone line that dated to 1942 and was handling those trains, but track in a siding that had "Scranton 1898" on its webs.

Finally, I understand NYC 999, in the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, rests on authentic Dudley section rail that would have been in use on the line when the engine was in service.

Here is my contribution to this thread... all three shots were taken in Lovington, NM on railroad that was slated for tiework to use as a storage yard for sand hoppers. The client was under the assumption that the rail was all 75ASCE... uh... no. Dimensionally this looked to be 56# rail. Good for all your 286k axle loads!

3 different mills... from 3 different countries. Welsh steel (1886), English steel (August 1887), and good old Pennsylvanian steel (July 1886).

Just go slow.

RCW 7585~ good job with the chalk to highlight the info on the rail. Will have to remember that trick.

The yard I work at sets next to some defunct locomotive shop... most all the rail surrounding that place is old... I traipsed around there one day while we were waiting for a train to make its setout... I was looking for small, old rail. I found 66 pound, and some I thought may have been the next size smaller. But, the info was so weathered on the sides I couldn't find out for sure.

The comp-bars bolting it to the adjacent rail were corroded so much I couldn't get the rail weight off of those, either.

There was a certain track that was where they set the sand hopper car to fill their sanding tower.... it for sure was 66 pound... and was rolled by some odd sounding name that I'm thinking was in Penna. somewhere... seemed like it started with an A.

There are all sorts of out of the way, seldom used spurs and dead end tracks in that facility... the place was built in 1914... surely there is some 56 pound rail in there somewhere. I need to take my camera to work with me and go on another old rail hunt.

Stumbled onto this at Railpictures; rare not only for its age, but the mill, too:

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.p ... 23#remarks

I know a gentleman who is not a rail enthusiast but worked for a steel company. His interest is old rails and he goes around with his chalk and takes photos of the information. Just one other aspect of this interesting industry.

Les

Interestingly enough... you will see "VT" rolled on the web for a good deal of your modern rail. It's not for St. Albans, Vermont, thought. VT in modern rollings is the hydrogen elimination method code for "Vacuum Treated".

Those comp bars are valuable... well to me at least they are. As for the chalk marking... that actually wasn't "chalk"... It's a trick I learned in the field 23 years ago when I was a track laborer. You see, because you never have chalk or a lumber crayon when you need it, you improvise. As you are kneeling down looking for the rail size, you glance around a soft stone laying there in the ballast.

When I Out in NM, the entire railroad north of Hobbs happened to be originally ballasted with native caliche (awful ballast normally, but worked well in the desert). Caliche is a quarried rock out there and on "dirt" roads they make roadbase from... when crushed, watered and compacted, is like concrete. It's really a miracle building material, actually.

Caliche deposits are found near the soil surface and form as water wicks up to the surface through capillary action and evaporates, leaving behind the dissolved minerals. Over tens of thousands of years what you have is mostly Calcium Carbonate (chalk) in beds. So in a way it was chalk I was using... in another, it was just doing what I normally do... grabbing a soft stone conveniently next to what I want to identify.

Stopped and took pictures today of this section of what I think may be 56 pound rail... it is adjacent to 66 pound rail.

The angle bars for the light rail are so corroded that I can't find any weight embossed on them... and the only thing I can find on the rail is E.T.S. and the date of 1884 and the month indicator had a lot of hash marks... so November or December. Couldn't get the whole length of this in my camera viewfinder.

I think some of the 66 pound rail was rolled "Cambria"

Wonder who ETS was....

Could "E.T." be Edgar Thompson, a Pennsylvania RR President with a steel works named after him?