North Freedom, Les.

Also there was one up for auction a year or so ago. Forget how much it fetched. I want to say around $3k to $5k.

Yes. The former C&NW depot at Stiles Junction, WS, now on the Escanaba & Lake Superior:

April 2008: http://andyws.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1133366 (Andre Wehrle photo)

April 2008: http://andyws.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1112325 (Andre Wehrle photo)

Here is a photo of the one at Mid-Continent's North Freedom depot.



And again at the depot's original location in the nearby town of Rock Springs, WI. (Photo probably from 1965)



It's shown up close and in operation at Mid-Continent in this video at the 2 minute and 25 second mark: http://youtu.be/jkjYnzVdaBQ?t=2m22s

-- Jeffrey Lentz

It's not a railroad structure, but it is a bridge made of rails, or what at least look like rails--Parks Gap Bridge in Berkeley County, W.Va., near Martinsburg:

http://bridgehunter.com/wv/berkeley/parks-gap/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ParkssGapBridge.JPG

http://www.gribblenation.com/wvpics/parksgap.html

Click on this image to "blow it up," and take a look at the visible end sections of the "girders:"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... Bridge.JPG

What's most interesting is that this bridge seems to have been built this way of new material by a local bridge company. It may well be the only surviving structure by that firm. It certainly is the only bridge I've ever seen built in this manner.

The New York, New Haven & Hartford RR reused center 3rd rails from
their early electrification attempts as fence posts at the New Haven,
Conn. train station. Shore Line Trolley Museum has some of them.
The cross section was \_/, so 2 were riveted together in an X shape,

There was a time when new "rail steel" sections were somewhat commonly used as structural steel, especially when the main option for construction was riveted structural shapes.

Los Angeles County public works department had a design for a shallow, box culvert for rain/storm water crossing under streets that used rails as the reinforcing for the upper deck. This design was used at least up through the 1950s and maybe later. The upper deck of the box which might be just inches below the street surface was almost entirely made up of rails and surrounded with concrete; then there was asphalt paving above that.

Another way to recycle rails into fence posts.


This steel mill was located in Marion, Ohio.

"Pollak Steel was a rerolling mill where used railroad rails were split apart and rerolled into various shapes such as concrete reinforcement bars, highway marker posts, farm fence posts and farm implements. When passenger rail traffic declined in the mid-1960s, used railroad rails were in limited supply, so Pollak built an electric furnace and a continuous casting machine to make billets for the mill, opening in 1966."

Copied from:

http://www.marionstar.com/article/20140 ... an-reunion

Bruce E. Babcock