Was just wondering if any of you other guy's here on RPN are into hunting old RR iron? I've been doing so for about the past 20 years now.I've attached a picture of some of the link & pins i've hauled home.I found probably half of them by metal detecting and the rest at river,creek and culvert sites.Most all of these were also found within a 20 mile radius of where i live mainly on one abandoned rail line.One thing that amazes me is the many different sizes of pins there are,that truly had to be a railroaders nightmare trying to find the right size coupling pin to fit the right size hole! Some are round pins but several sizes! some are wide,narrow and flat,while others are fat and flat.I have a large 180 lb. LS&MS marked drawhead in the center of the picture found at a river site,only a few pins will fit the hole in that! I've seen some older RR loco photo's from way back during the link & pin era that were mainy switchers that would have a box on the front of the pilot filled with link & pins.I'm guessing this was an assortment of different types that one could go fetch what peticular size they needed.I can't image having to carry 3-4 different types back even 10 car lengths in order to find wich peticular coupling pin would work.Most coupling links i presume were interchangeable as the ones i found seem like they all fit the drawhead i have.I've basically only found 3 types of links so far.Round links,links that are flat top & bottom with rounded sides and about 4 really old links that were shorter but were tall flat on all sides.Along with finding link & pins i've found quite a few old cast iron bolt on style journal box covers and also early hinged style journal box lids.Most all have RR names in raised letters,some also have year dates,while others have names of some early car companies.Some date back to the early 1850's.Was just curious if anyone else looks for this stuff as i only know about 3 others that do so.

That is truly fascinating. I have found a link, a pin, and a drawhead along some long-ago abandoned W.M. Ritter logging lines in Western NC, but wow, that's a helluva collection you have there. I'm not aware of anything like it anywhere else.

You can count me in your camp. I have done a lot of metal detecting on old railroad beds looking for those really old iron artifacts. Your collection is gorgeous. I have found mostly pins, and most of them look like the ones you show with the top-hat style head. Some just have a simple nail style head, which would be hard to get your fingers around to pull.

One has a round, wrought-iron shank that was rolled transverse, like rolling clay into a snake between your hands. It was then stood on end in a square mold with draft, and a square head was poured around it with cast iron. So it is like a large, square-headed bolt without threads. Old railroad roadbeds are littered with this kind of ancient iron artifacts.

Matt and Ron, Thank's for the nice comments.Looking for old RR iron is just something i enjoy doing in my spare time.Even though i work for the RR and get way more of my fill of it at times,and then working on my own RR hobby projects at home,to me there's just something more interesting about getting out and walking some of the old RR grades and looking for the past.When you dig this stuff up or see it laying down in the bottom of a river or creek you just can't help but wonder about the railroaders that used the link & pins,or the trains the old iron fell off of more than 100 years ago.I also enjoy reading thru old newspaper accounts on microfilm and have found a few wrecks that way by comparing property owners names mentioned in some articles where a wreck occured to the old county maps that show the names.

Most of the coupling pins i've found are that top-hat style you mention Ron but even those seem to be different sizes of the actual pin.My favorites are the older ball grip style and the ones with a ring top wich some still have chain links attached.There seem to be fewer of those.The much older ones have the hammered ends wich have been flattened when made.Some have a flattened top with a finger indentation on each side for gripping and have a notch cut out near the bottom of the pin.Not sure why the notch? maybe a wire was wrapped around it after inserting to keep the pin from working loose? A few pins are simple pins with a bent over top.I've also found a few link & pins with RR names stamped into them.Some are hard to read.Last year in the fall i found one in a northwestern Ohio river that was in really nice shape and was stamped N C & ST L. At first i thought i had found a old Nickle Plate pin but then realized there was no Y between the N and C so i then knew it was Nashville Chattanooga & St. Louis pin.That one ended up a long way from home where it was pitched into the river.Some coupling pins and links i've found in rivers are really deteriorated and are nothing but iron strands after cleaning.Most river finds have about 3/8 inch of rust caked coating on them that i usually chip off with a ball pean hammer.It flakes right off.Wear gloves because the black iron under the scale will blacken your hands! I then wire wheel the iron using a 4" mini grinder with a braided wire wheel.I then let them dry good for a week or two then either clear coat them or paint them black.I've found a few jbcs.in the rivers but the iron in those seem more fragile and you have to be carefull cleaning those as you can break them or even wire wheel the lettering off!


I've actually found 3 coupling links laying down in the ditch and a older small cast iron journal box cover marked Indiana Car Company ,Cambridge City from looking out my engine window over the years on some slow moving trains doing about 10mph after pulling out of the yard a few miles.When you have about 190 empty coal hoppers and 1 GE widebody its a long slow trip where your lucky to reach 30mph the entire trip except going downhill! I didn't stop the train to jump down and retieve those but drove out later and took a walk to find them after work.

Matt did your drawhead that you found have any RR markings or manufacturing marks on it? That had to be a interesting and probably a heavy find! I've attached a photo of some of my favorite cast iron bolt on journal box covers.The top two rows are Ebay purchases.The very top row the far left is a Allen style lid,then 3 Hewitt lids next to it.The bottom 6 rows are all dug finds i found with my metal detector.

What part of the country are you in that you can find artifacts like that? Around here it is very hard to find anything like that. However I did find a Pitt coupler and draft gear once along the B&O lake main in Warren, OH.

Thanks for sharing. Very impressive.

Stationary Steam, I live in northern Ohio.Without having to type out some long drawn out paragraphs about looking for this stuff wich might bore some other readers wich i'll probably have a few paragraphs done anyhow before i'm done rambling.Go to the Railfan.net website forums and under the fallen flags catagory click the Lehigh Valley section,then scroll down near the bottom of the first page to Lehigh Valley marked journal box covers.I've got a few post's on hunting for old RR iron.The main reason i've posted this stuff is i don't know that many guy's that look for this old RR iron as i do.And from just what i've been finding close to where i live i can't imagine what all is out there to be found in other states across the country! I sure as heck don't have the time to look for it everywhere and i sure can't find it all! I'd love to hear stories from other guy's of what all they have found.I know there are people out west that hunt the old CPRR grade.The climate out there is much better for the old iron also.There's a cool website called "Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum" if you bring that up click exhibits and scroll down to California iron from the G.J. Graves collection.That fellow Chris Graves has a impressive collection of CPRR iron and alot of it is early RR rail.My LS&MS drawhead is also on the website under collectibles if you scroll down to link & pin coupler drawhead.

You don't need a high dollar metal detector to find this stuff either.I've got a outdated 10 year old Garrett GTA350 that i bought new wich i absolutely love and have used extra as back-up.You can pick them up used on Ebay for around $120 or less.I set mine to full discrimination,and the deepest setting and it will usually only go off on the heavier iron objects like link or pins or jbcs.If a big nut,bolt,or spike is close to the surface it will go off.Sure your going to find alot more of that stuff compared to the good old iron but with my GTA350 I'm so used to the tones it makes on heavier iron that i don't even bother with the lighter broken tones wich are smaller things like nuts,bolts and spikes.Another bonus to full discrimination is you'll also find other goodies like key's,lock's and brass items.I've found a few locks and keys and some RR buttons,and even old brass RR lantern burners and lantern dome tops,and i've also found some brass locomotive crosshead oilers along with some cast iron ones with brass tops that unscrewed.A few still had gummy old oil in them after being burried for 100 years.You open them up and it's like smelling the old locomotive they came off of! You'll also find some of the old 1850's railchairs that look like a H plate with bent over centers where it was hammered over te rail joints and also some old cast iron ones along with maybe even some old 1850's pear rail.I've found pcs. of strap rail and strap rail spikes from 2 of the oldest RR's here in Ohio.One time while down in Va.i even snagged a small pc. of old U rail back in the woods off a old abandoned line.I've attached a photo below of a full 20ft.or so length of 1850'S pear rail with notched end for the spikes with the rail chair still attched to it that i stumbled on a year ago.I've yet to retrieve it but you don't find many pcs, of pear rail like that with the notched ends and chair still attached for joining the rail.This stuff maybe rusty old iron to some but it's RR history and preservation,thens theres the old 1850's glass threadless insulators,thats a whole different ball game!

I know exactly what you mean when you say that those old artifacts seem to communicate from the past.

Trainmen in the link and pin era used to hoard links and pins in their caboose because that hardware was not standardized, and they never knew what would be needed to make couplings to cars that they were to pick up. And often, a lot of hardware was needed for such pickups because the crew that left the cars stripped the hardware off for their personal stockpile.

I have one of those Hewitt type journal box covers, but it is not exactly like any of the three you show in the photo. With mine, there is a lot of taper on the lid itself, so it is quite trapezoidal. There certainly are a wide variety of covers over the span of history.

I have found quite a few items just lying on the surface after 100 years or more. Metal detecting finds a lot more, but it also finds a lot of worthless trash. There are always lots of railroad spikes, but every so often even a spike can be quite a find because there are some very unique spike designs that were not widely used. I found a spike with a triangular cross section to the shank, known as a bayonet spike. I recently found a spike with a four-sided point rather than the typical chisel point.

I am not quite sure what you mean by your description of a notch on the bottom of a pin. The one I found with the cast iron square head has a very shallow notch (1/16” deep X 3/8” wide) across the diameter of the bottom end. I believe this is the remnant feature left by the cut-off process in making multiple pins from a longer length of round forged pin shank material. With the pin shank red hot, a piercing tool like a steel spike pierced crosswise through the pin shank. The wedging action of this piercing point would create the tensile force to part the pin shank, thus separating or “cutting” it off so to speak.

This cutoff would not need to be clean like a saw cut, so that would suggest shearing it. But shearing would upset a lot of material on both sides of the cut, which would oval the pin shank. Too much ovaling, and the pin would not go into the coupler-housing hole.

So a piercing tool consisting of a 3/8” square wedge-pointed pin, was pushed crosswise through the coupler pin shank which was about 1-1/2” dia. It pierces through the pin body without much upset and parts it from the parent stock. It leaves a shallow rectangular notch on both halves of the pin shank stock where they separated

On the pin I found with this remnant feature, I can see that the feature was forced crosswise to the pin shank. The material clearly sucks inward on one side, which indicates the penetration of the piercing tool.

So, this piercing method of cutoff is my theory, but I have never seen any other reference or documentation of it.

Ron, I've atached a photo of some of those flat coupling pins that have the notch.I think i have 5-6 total and all have that notch near the bottom.In the photo i have the pins are turned and propped at a angle slightly as to see the defined notch.I really do not know the exact purpose that the notch was for? I was just assuming maybe it was to possibly tie a wire around to keep the pin from jumping up and down after it was placed thru the link in the drawhead? These flat pins are flat on the widest sides of the pin and slightly rounded on the narrower sides.The black one has the indentations at the top for a thumb and finger to grip it while placing it in the drawhead.The center pin is a river find and you can see how deteriorated the iron is, as strands of iron are showing thru in places.

I think i might have a coupling pin somewhat like your talking about with the square head on top only mine has a rectangular chunk of iron wich looks like it is pieced on to the top of the pin.The odd thing is it is a shorer pin and near the botom of the pin it is actually slotted thru the middle sort of like a key would go into it? It's burried in the bottom of one of my buckets of link & pins at the present.I have another unusual coupling pin wich i think is like one for those hook type couplers pictured in John H. White's book The American Railroad Freight Car on page 507,the bottom left picture.It is a very long pin with a handle at top,almost longer than the length of 2 pins.That book is a excellant source for identifying some old railroad iron as it is filled with old diagrams,photo's and fantastic information.

I think the notches are for cocking the pin in the hole in the top of the pocket during making a joint. Having started the link into the pocket, the brakeman would then stand back while the cars came together, the shock of which would make the pin fall down and secure the joint. Less safe than early automatic couplers..........but very inexpensive comparatively.

dave

Dave, That's a good point on what those notches could be for.Does anyone have a drawhead or have photo's of one that would have or show the somewhat rectangular hole that these types of pins would fit into? They obviously will not fit into a drawhead with a round hole.On the LS&MS drawhead i have,it has a dog lever inside in wich the brakeman could drop the pin down into the hole 1/2 the way ahead of time,the pin then rests on the dog lever before making the coupling.He could then stand back out of harms way and give hand signals to the engineer to back the train to make the coupling,as the link from the adjoning car your making the coupling to goes into the drawhead the link hits the dog lever and the pin drops in place.It deffinately had to be an improvement over earlier style drawheads and much safer.Of course the link would have had to already been in place on the other car sitting,in wich he would have been coupling to or visa versa.The mouth on this peticular drawhead is also sloped downward on the bottom and angled somewhat on the sides for recieving the link of an adjoing car.Perhaps the LS&MS Ry. only used this style of drawhead on their passenger car fleet? It is a rather long drawhead.If you had a freight train with cars from other roads and only a few LS&MS cars i can't see how it would make much difference with only a few cars in the train having drawheads with this style of safety dog lever for the pins.

F.N.

This is a fabulous collection! Thanks for posting.

Some of the townships that have taken over ownership of the PRR Low Grade have removed the bankruptcy-era ballast and graded down to the steam-era cinders level. Late winter and spring of this year, after the frost heave had done its work, I went collecting and came away with trinkets. But nothing of your caliber. Of course, there would not be link and pin along the Low Grade because of its construction date.

F.N. Kuenzel,
I think we are really on the same wavelength with this old iron collecting, and I thought I was the only one interested in it. Coincidentally, I have also found a couple of those oil cups you mentioned, and one does indeed have oil in it from pre-1900, and it sure does have some antique machinery type of odor. I assume mine are off of the rod/crank pin bearings rather than off of crosshead guides. I found a brass oil cup and one with a steel body and needle screw with a brass cap. Both are adjustable needle valve types. The brass one shows up on 1882 Manchester locomotives. Oil cups have a pipe nipple that screws into the bearing housing. Do the ones you found have that pipe nipple broken off? Both of mine do. It indicates that they were knocked off. Oil cups got broken off when an engine tipped over, so finding one is evidence of a wreck, and wreck sites often contain other parts.

I don’t know what that notch in your pins is for. I have never seen that before. Dave’s explanation of a notch feature to cock the pin so it falls automatically makes sense. Why would they have gone to the rectangular cross section of the shank? It doesn’t seem like it would be necessary for the notch feature principle. Would the rectangular cross section be to strengthen the pin in the direction that most needs the strength? I have never seen that rectangular shank or the notched feature before. What I was talking about above was a different kind of notch.

However, I did find a piece that I assumed to have been a forged handle shape broken off of a heavy iron lever such as might me used to lift a pilot snowplow on a pre-1900 4-4-0. When I look at your photo of that pin on the bottom of the three, that entire notch end of the pin, including its size, looks quite similar to what I found and believed to be the lever handle. So now I wonder if it is a piece of one of those pins and not a handle.

If that notch is for the cocking-to-fall principle, I suspect there was a lot of variation in the exact configuration of the features. The broken off piece I found has a 3/8” round headed rivet pressed in crosswise to the flats between the notch and the finished end. The end of the rivet sticks out the opposite side about ¼”.

Can you post photos of your oil cups?

Ron, Ok,below is a photo of some of my engine oilers found.The largest on the far left is a crosshead oiler and is all steel or iron? All the ones mounted on the board in the photo still have the threaded bottoms.I found two other identical large ones as the far left one but the threaded bottoms were busted off and one had a broken hinged lid.I visited the Ohio Central RR about 2 years ago on a somewhat business trip to deliver a item to them and took along a few of my iron finds including the large oiler on the left in the photo and showed it to the master mechanic of the steam dept. as i wasn't sure what it was.He told me it was a old crosshead oiler and took me over to the oldest steam engine they have and showed me one just like it on the engines crosshead guide.As for the other oilers in my photo maybe the smaller ones are off the rod & crank pin bearings? The next 2 in line in my photo have the needle screws mounted on the outside of the board next to them.The smallest one on the far right is my favorite as it is all brass and somewhat resembles a old trumpet mouth piece but has the threaded base and small oil hole thru it.I did find another really old all iron or steel oiler this spring that was a large one while metal detecting a farmers field where the row once was on the old B&O line wich was originally the SM&N that went from Sandusky Oh. down to Newark Oh.It was totally rust encrusted and broke apart while cleaning it.

You'll see 4 other brass items in the photo in front.The first on far left it a big brass threaded plug of some sort but has a tiny hole thru the center all the way thru.On top it is stamped M B 8681 on the botom of the plug it is stamped the same only with larger letters and numbers.The second brass item is some kind of large brass threaded cap with a cupped center and small hole thru the center.The third brass item is a oiler cup cap identical to the one mounted on the board behind it.The last item in front is just a brass threaded plug of some sort.Everything i find i bring home except stuff like the common RR spikes,track bolts and nuts or just plain scrap junk.Part of the fun about hunting this old stuff is just trying to learn what some of it is!I have other small brass items i've brought home that i'm not sure about.I've also found a broken end of a brass air brake handle and a few years ago,and a brass name tag with P.J.Ryan on it wich must have come off a engineers/firemans oil can.I found the name of the guy in the 900 page plus 1900 LS&MS Represenitve Of Employees book.At the time the guy was a fireman and later a engineer for the Lake Shore and his father also worked for the RR.That was really neat connecting a dug find to a employee of the RR over 100 years ago even though it was only a small brass name tag.Anytime you want to talk hunting old RR iron feel free to email me.My email is: lv95026caboose@aol.com It may take me a day or two to respond as i work for the RR.

Happy Hunting!
Fritz N. Kuenzel

FNK:

What a great collection you've dug up, and thanks for posting the pics and sharing with us. Truly amazing what you've found, especially the journal lids and oil cups.

I'v occasionally come across broken pieces of grate bars in cinder fill ballast, and over the years some RMNE folks have discovered pins and links (and pieces of each). But your trove is quite specatular!

Howard P.