From a thread on a surveying board I frequent:

That is indeed unusual to say the least. I'd wager that the stone culvert is original and that the metalwork was added at a later date to reinforce the culvert-most likely due to the weight of new locomotives.

Interesting indeed. My first thought was that this was a early form of sleeve repair, but I can't tell from the images.

Could you tell if and if so how the rail were fastened to either the inner or outer tubes?

Greg

Someone needs to measure and document those rail sections.

They appear to be proprietary section designs that should probably not be melted for scrap.

seems obvious its a normal tube, the rails probably attached similar like spikes or bolted on, the rails provide support, the ring placed on, the pin holds it on, the those rocks are piled over., the ring stops the rocks from sliding over and it all becomes one happy supporting mechanism. The tube probably would crush without the rails. Rails were probably pretty common, easy to use than to custom make an I beam or what not, its the "make use with what you got" thing.

I wonder if the tube is actually porous, or has holes to allow water to drop thru.

They would have had plenty of rails for such a secondary purpose. But I wonder about the rings. They would need to be made, I suppose by casting. So I wonder if this was a manfactured system for using rails combined with specialized parts.

The ex-M&StL water tank at Carver, MN is framed with a system of rails and special castings to join multiple rails together at their ends in order to make multi-rail columns for the tank support. As I recall, there are also special castings to tie the sets of rails together at mid-column.

So I wonder if this culvert might be the same sort of purchased "kit" to make a structure using secondhand rails. Interestingly, if it is such a kit, it may have made more sense to simply use multiple rings, say six feet apart and not use rails. Such a ring-stiffened cylinder might be more structurally efficient than using rails as longitudinal wall ribs.

There is (was?) a former Reading box culvert in Lewisburg, Pa. that was built by building abotments about eight feet apart, laying rails between the two abutments, putting bricks between the head and web of the rails and packing them all tight, then laying stonework atop that and building the roadbed embankment atop that. I haven't gone looking for it in years, but it was there, somewhere around the Fourth Street crossing and Bucknell University......

When I cross posted this, I didn't realize the original post was in a category restricted to registered users. The webpage owner graciously moved the thread to a general category so you can now read the original post. Thanks, Wendell.

There was a comment about a bridge made from rails which I think leads to a future thread on Rypn about stuff made from old rails. What is the most interesting thing you have run across that is made from rail?

there might be the occassional signpost made by a rail stuck into the ground..

In the early 1900s, the 42" gauge Prince Edward Island Railway build many iron truss bridges in their Charlottetown Shops. These used original 42 pound rail with custom castings, made locally, for the connections.

Photos of a number of these bridges exist at the Canada Science & Technology Museum from a 1916 engineering study related to the planned gauge change, and a couple of drawings of the custom cast parts exist in the National Archives of Canada.

None of these bridges survived the 1920s gauge change, unless some unknown farmer bought one and moved it.

Steve Hunter

I've seen a number of short bridges (5-6 feet long) constructed by laying rails lengthwise, side by side, on stone or concrete abutments, with the ties directly atop the rails. I've also seen this type of bridge with rails upside down between the others.

One of the most interesting bridges I've seen was a heavy steel plate laid on the abutments with rails bolted directly to the plate, along with two 10-inch I-beams similarly bolted to the edges of the plate. This bridge was used for a very low clearance overpass over a one-lane road.

Some of the original fencing on TVRM's right of way in East Chattanooga (near the west end of the tunnel) was made of old rails. It was more of a railing than a fence, with a length of rail welded to the rails that were driven as posts.

Cattle guards made with old rails are ridiculously common in the West. In one area I was in, the guards were quite obviously made from the rails of a narrow gauge line that had been torn up a century earlier. They were so common, in fact, that I stopped paying attention to them.

The now-gone Camp 6 Logging Museum in Tacoma, WA had an interesting fence along the right-of-way. It was of the "chain and bollard" design, but the "bollards" were made of sticks of rail that were driven into the ground vertically and the "chain" was actually old logging cable that was strung through holes drilled in the top of each piece of rail bollard. Very fitting for the location.

Washington State University in Pullman, WA has a number of gravel parking lots where old rail has been used for parking stops.

Andy -

The Chicago & Northwestern used old rails as a substitute for posts on their semaphore train order boards. This was apparently a very common practice for the railroad. Sure wish I had one at HVRM! Are any of these preserved at railroad museums, or as part of existing C&NW depots?

Les