About once a year or so we'll get a call from the Public Works people in St. Paul or Minneapolis asking us about tracks in the street that they are repairing. Mostly the rail is standard 90-pound T-rail as almost all the special work was pulled up as lines were abandoned in the 1940s and 50s by edict of both cities. But in many cases the regular track was left in place. I suppose they felt at the time that it wasn't worth it to take that stuff up.

When the city removes the track when they rebuild/repave a street, what typically happens is they put the equivalent of the bar a track gang uses to carry rail around the rail head. The crane then tugs on the rail and the head comes up but the base stays in the ground. The web of the rail is so corroded from salt that there's hardly anything left there. After the cussing subsides, the city's crew then puts their lifter on the base and up the rest comes.