Yep Charles, if it budges an inch, it's >mine<.

I always try to keep ropes and beers on hand, but don't drink em whilst in process.

Just now, Anachronist58 said:

I always try to keep ropes and beers on hand, but don't drink em whilst in process.

Drinking ropes is never a good idea.

It might be tricky getting the crane out into the woods, but the method in this video looks like a lot of fun!

On 5/20/2016 at 3:12 PM, JHCC said:

Drinking ropes is never a good idea.

Of course not, ... you smoke rope .....

Well, it helps to know the ropes.

A couple of bicycle wheels and a piece of treaded rod.  tie the rail to the axle near the balance point and wheel it out. 

Gnaw, the beer soaked rope, I'm no dope.

With some good PPE, a nice chair, and some refreshments, I could watch that mag lift all day! Great video.

Too bad there's nothing overhead to attach block & tackle (come-along) to .

 

Why lift? A bit of digging, and even if one has to tie off your tackle to trees you can skid it out of their. I've done some pretty stupid things over the years with wheel barrows, apliance trucks and kids wagons...

How old does a rail have to be to be wrought? My son found a narrow-gauge rail a couple years ago. It was from the last era of White Pine logging in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. It was from the 1880-1915 timeframe. I myself know of some rail from 100 years ago....also logging rail. I'm curious what it would be worth if wrought, and how would you market/sell it....chunks, pieces, whole rail?????????

Go to google and look up "wrought iron spark test". Pricing depends on how much you want to profit and your expenses.

                                                                         Littleblacksmith

 

53 minutes ago, j.morse said:

How old does a rail have to be to be wrought? My son found a narrow-gauge rail a couple years ago. It was from the last era of White Pine logging in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. It was from the 1880-1915 timeframe. I myself know of some rail from 100 years ago....also logging rail. I'm curious what it would be worth if wrought, and how would you market/sell it....chunks, pieces, whole rail?????????

According to this site, steel trail was introduced in Pennsylvania in 1863 and by 1890 was used in about 80% of all lines.

On 2016-05-18 at 7:23 AM, j.morse said:

I recently bought a RR tool at an estate sale. It is basically a cold cut-off hardy with a long handle. I had no idea what I had until a RR worker on another forum told me. It was used to score a line all around a rail. Then said rail was dropped on another rail right at the line scored. It would, according to the RR guy, snap the scored rail cleanly. I have not tried it.

When I was young I worked on the Canadian Pacific Railway on a section gang in the Columbia River Valley in the British Columbia rockies. I saw it done that way. Actually, I do not recall the 'drop the rail thing.' I recall scoring the rail all around and then sledging the hardy hard on top of the rail to make the cut.

By the way, a whole length of rail--of the older type--is 33' long. Rail was referred to by its weight; all the rail on our section was 125lb rail (125 lbs per foot). The old guys on the section gang really knew how to use jacks and lever arms to move that heavy rail around. All our work was out in the boonies and any sort of crane was absolutely unheard of. At the time I was fresh out of university and thought I knew everything. The guys on the section gang taught me I really didn't. I appreciated that.

Good Morning,

Rail is 10 Yards long, 33 Ft.  Rail is measured, by weight, per yard. 125 lbs. Rail is, 125 lbs. per Yard

Yes, there are many sizes of Rail. Some say Rail is 1095, I am not sure though.

Neil

If I found that in the woods and had to have a piece, I would drag my small torch set out there on a RAINY day when everything is well soaked and cut it.  First I would determine how long it actually was as it might be moveable as it is.

The official specs for rail have been posted here before why guess?

Yard is 3 feet, so that would be 11 yards, meters are 3.2 feet and some, so 10 meters and a hair...

Yep pounds per yard, as verified for my own curiosity from these four "specimens" (although at times I have been accused of talking softly to them a petting them - absurd!).

Robert Taylor

Edited June 6, 201610 yr by Anachronist58
addendum, clarification

There's old rail like that all around me and I see people taking it all the time. I personally use a Milwaukee cordless bandsaw to cut all kinds of rail. I got it at Home Depot it's nothing special. If the rail is to big I dig under it or if I can I put a car jack under it and block it up. With old rail like that it's much easier to cut. In fact they cut it on spot with no tools a real long time ago. This is how they did it..

Take a cold chisel and mark a clean line around the track. Then take a good size sledge hammer and hit your mark. That's it, it will snap and much easier than you'd ever think! Back in the day they'd mark the rail with a chisel and drop it onto another piece of track and the rail would snap clean. That's how it was done with old track. They didn't have power tools out there on site back then. All you have to do is mark and snap it. New track you can't do that. New track is steel old track is iron. Steel track will not snap! I'm in Pa and there's tons of old Pa RR track around and that's even today how they remove it. So just snap it if you don't have a cordless bandsaw. People think way to much into cutting rail and it's really not that hard. 

I have a 5' piece of railroad track with Carnegie's name on it.

Jona, welcome aboard from 7500' in SE Wyoming.  Glad to have you.

Carnegie Steel made LOTS of railroad Track starting in about 1892.  Most of it was used in the eastern US.  

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

When I was in high school, I had a job working on a crew that repaired small sections of railroad track that had issues.  It was a tough job, but I learned a lot.  The mainline sections were 165 lbs. per 3 feet.  The older track was not as large as what they use today.  We used to cut it with a gas-powered chop saw, but as others have said, you have to be very mindful of sparks, as it will definitely catch the woods on fire.  I've seen it.  If I couldn't drag it out with a tractor or something, I would cut it with a cordless bandsaw.  If I didn't have that, I would cut it with a small torch rig.  If I didn't have that, I'd probably just sit on it and drink a beer.

A well-formulated decision tree.