Our 4-8-0 1118 has a pair just like that. One of them is in excellent shape, and the other is corroded all to crap after 59 years in a scrapyard.

Howard P. , Thank's for the nice comments on the old iron.Here's one last picture for the night of some of my early hinged journal box covers.The top 4 i did not dig up but are only shown in comparison to the sizes of the small older covers.You can see how much smaller the jbcs.in the bottom rows are compared to that largest one in the top row on the far left from the 1950's or 60's.Alot of these early hinged jbcs. have RR markings in raised letters on them also.The bottom row 5 jbcs.are actually bolt ons but the actual lids are hinged and believe it or not 2 of them still work after being burried so long,the others are froze up.The 3 bottom row left ones are Kinzer & Jones,Pittsburg Pa. patent ones wich are marked as so on the backside.The fronts have a 1876 date and 2 are LS&MS marked ones and the nicest of the 3 is a PRR marked one.The far 2 right jbcs.in the bottom row are LS&MS ones.The farthest right one has it's bolt ears broke off and would have looked like the one to the left of it.

From my photo's you can now see what there is waiting to be found out there.I've been at this for 20 years now and wish i had started sooner! All it takes is the time to hunt for it and a inexpensive metal detector and also some persistance and not to be afraid of briars and thick underbrush.This stuff does not fall out of the sky in front of you.You have to look for it! In some places where farmers have plowed up the old grade you don't even need a detector.And last please get the permission to do so on some abandoned RR's that are now on private property.Look at it this way the folks can either say yes! or no! I had one occasion several years ago where a good friend of mine knew a guy that owned property by a old abandoned grade i wanted to hunt on.I went up to where he worked,he was on lunch break and not there,then called him on the phone,no answer.My friend said oh go ahead and go out there he won't care,tell him that you know me.I wasn't out there 15 minutes and here comes this guy walking across a plowed muddy field with a 12 guage shotgun! He was quite upset at first but after i explained the situation to him he finally said go ahead and do what your doing but be careful of my neighbor down the road.I thought to myself gee maybe he'll come out with something bigger than a 12 guage! That day i found a coupling pin,a really old cast iron rail chair and a old marker light bracket in about 4 hours of hunting.

It is also getting harder to hunt in some places.Used to be you could park along the road or pull in off the road onto just about any old abandoned grade and nobody bothered you at all.Since 911 it seems like people notice any strange car pulled off the road and will call the law within minutes.Alot of old rows are even posted at crossings.

I also would not recommend hunting for old RR iron along any class 1 RR's or any other live RR for that matter,even if your down in the ditches or off to the side,to them it's trespassing! And besides that i've found that on any RR thats newer than 1900 or that has heavy ballast dumped down along the row to the ditches your not going to find anything anyhow as the old stuff is burried very deep under tons of ballast! You might find some old iron at the bottom of a high embankment or in a creek or river under bridges though.My favorite hunting is on old abandoned RR's with cinders and little ballast.The ones that have been ripped out now for 30 years and ones that date back to the 1850's.

Gary, I have a question for you.When restoring these old steam engines like 1118 be it cosmetically or to bring one back to life.Is there a scource out there that still makes these engine oilers?

Fritz,

Thanks for posting your oil cups. The second and third ones from the left look similar to the ones I found, which I assume are rod /crank pin bearing oil cups. One of mine is all steel except for a brass cap, and looks identical to the third from the left. The other one I found is all brass and also looks identical to the third from the left, except the top of mine rounds inward like a dome shape, until it meet the top, which is a smaller diameter than the body. It is sort of like a bottle with a screw-off top. It is completely green oxidized on the outside, and the threads of the cap, the valve stem, and the lock nut all turn with the silky smooth feel of a micrometer. It was broken off in a rear-end collision sometime between 1871 and 1902.

As I think about it, I suppose these oil cups were rather easily lost by simply getting shaken until they unthreaded. They are only attached with a small pipe thread nipple, and that is brass going into a steel hole. The connection is bound to be oily, so it certainly would not be like a locked thread of any sort. So oil cups probably got thrown off quite often.

Based on my limited experience with WW&F #10, Vulcan 04-4T Forney, oil cups working loose are a common occurance. Finding them is a bigger problem.

Try to keep ANY lube fitting intact on the moving parts of a Shay...........

The track crew made a daily return of parts they found along the ROW on the interesting side.

dave

Fritz, 1118's restoration will be strictly cosmetic, although we plan on making it reliably towable at slow speeds. I would suspect that a good machinist wouldn't have too much trouble reproducing oil cups. These guys might even have something available.
http://www.strasburgrailroad.com/mechan ... lities.php