Craigslist sometimes turns up some gems. For $500 we bought about 100 track feet of 100 lb. rail. Our volunteer crew turned out yesterday to retrieve the rail and move it to Youngstown.

Our standard rail length is 16' 6", or half of a 33' stick. Due to tight quarters at the museum it is difficult to handle full lengths, and I cannot haul full lengths at any rate. So we cut the rails in half. A few extra joints won't hurt anything.

I attached a winch to the front of the trailer and we pulled each length onto the trailer. This worked out rather well.

That's awesome.

I haven't had a chance to mention it before, but I also love that you have one of the CR Ugly Duckling trucks. If you ever need to part with it, I know a certain historical society that might be interested in it.

As we were driving down Route 11 yesterday enroute to pick up the rails, an SUV pulled up alongside, honked his horn and gave us a thumbs up as he overtook us. Seems that people like what we affectionately call "spongebob squaretruck".

Another time, driving south alongside Conway Yard and as we got to East Conway I heard a locomotive horn and looked over to see an engineer half out of the cab window waving at us. Seems that some NS employees also like our truck!

My greatest enjoyment comes from encounters with other railroad trucks on the road, and to see their expressions as I drive past. A sense of "Did I just see what I thought I saw" on their faces.

This.

Hi,

A bit of a tangent.

Before my Mom died and I was active in Live Steam (7.5" gauge 2.5" scale), I was coming back from a run with my D&RGW box car in a 4'x8' trailer. I had to stop by Home Depot.

Mom was went in with me but while we were inside, her back started hurting (she was about 70 at the time) so I told Mom to wait and I'd drive around to pick her up - I had had to park way out with my trailer taking up 2 spaces). Mom got in the car laughing.

She said a fellow was walking towards the building when I drove by with the tailer. She said it was the perfect double take. How often does a trailer get seen at home depot - very often. Loaded with a railroad box car - rarely.

Doug vV

This is the latest revision of the track plan for the J&L Narrow Gauge Railroad. The orange lines are tracks that are either in place or that we hope to have complete by the end of this year. The blue lines denote future extensions. Our property is only 300' long so we will be fitting a lot into a tight area. The second leg of the switchback will gain about four feet in elevation in about 80 feet to reach the plateau at the rear of the property.

Being built as a steel industry themed operation, we hope to show that by using narrow gauge trains a lot of operation can be squeezed into a small area. This was the main reason for using narrow gauge in steel plants.

The entire railroad will be built using rail from 85 lb. to 115 lb. with No. 3 and 4 turnouts. No rail lighter than 85 lb. will be used, allowing for the operation of the 58 over all of the trackage.

So what was the story. How did someone just happen to have rail in their front yard?

In the mid 1990s the city of Dover had a siding running through some city property, and contracted with this guy to pull it up for scrap. Instead of scrapping it he brought it to his farm and piled it up. Well he is now selling the property and cleaning up the land. You cannot scrap rail (yards won't take railroad stuff in Ohio), so he put it on Craigslist. I saw it and bought it. He drug it up over the hill out by the road so I could load it easier.

It used to be rather easy to get 'rail for the taking' here in the US... most of the rail in IRM's three miles of indoor storage track was donated in place and picked up by the members, mostly from defunct gravel pits and other industrial operations... I recall pulling some out of the Chrysler plant in Belvedere in the eighties. One of the things that helped was the general adoption of 100 ton capacity freight cars; the railroads increased their minimum rail section for new spurs to be connected to their systems to 112#, rendering all this older rail good for nothing but scrap. The lightest rail acquired this way was 56#, rolled in 1881, IIRC.

Hi Rick,

Its clear you've done a lot of heavy labor and its really beginning to pay off! I'm happy to see how much progress you have made. More power to you, sir!

How's the "Rolling Ingot" coming?

The frame of the J&L 58 is waiting to be moved out to a fab shop for some welded repairs. I am planning to have a crane on site in a couple of weeks doing a bunch of moves and it will be loaded on that day. Really until the frame returns there isn't much else that we can do on the loco project, so in that time we will be working on building track. Also doing a bit of fundraising so we can pay for the boiler work.