Train related question.

EVILDR235

When we were kids we use to walk along the train tracks. Around the rails and between the rails there was something that looked like chunks of iron and steel laying all over the place. This was back in the 1950s. It was everywhere there were train tracks and this was in Northern Calif. What was this stuff ?

EvilDr235

TooBig

maybe burn coal or human waste as they use to dump waste on the bed under the tracks

grumpygy

All we had was corn and other feed.

Irish 8802

I lived about 100 yards from the tracks(as the crow flies),never took much notice of the ground, Could have been cinders..This in Kansas City, Mo.I am 76,,Most of relatives worked for Missouri Pacific.

jimdeere

Clinkers

pingjockey

You aren't talking about all of the old spikes and rail pads etc. that
accumulated along the tracks are you?

EVILDR235

I am talking about stuff that looks like melted iron or steel. Odd shapes and some what heavy.

EvilDr235

Da-Tank

That was called coke. The unburned residue of coal. COLLECTED FROM COAL BURNER POWER STATIONS FOR HIGHSCHOOL RACE TRACKS.

Wild Turkey

Your thinking of "cinders". Coke is coal that has been heated to drive off gasses,etc. and is burned in making steel.

1911a1-fan

we used to call it pig iron, but living close to a steel mill it was plentiful, around here they are spherical about the size of a marble, and made great ammo for a sling shot or wrist rocket , used to fill our pockets up then get in trouble


you would rarely find them that looked like lava rocks made of iron, the coke plant was miles away on the other side of the mill

sxsnuf

Northern California might be "heavy grade" territory.
Before the vast improvements in dynamic braking, a train would stop before descending a long, steep grade and the brakeman would set "retaining valves" on a pre- determined number of cars according to % grade and train tonnage.
This would prevent the brakes from releasing on the selected rail cars.
Depending on how well maintained the brake assemblies were, this could, of course, eventually cause the brake shoes to burn off until the brake head and wheel were metal to metal.
* would build up until the pounding of the rail would cause it to fall off.
Or, the brakeman might knock it off after the train reached the bottom of the grade and he went back to reset the valves to their exhaust position.

Just a wild guess![;)]

Oakie

Iron ore or coal. We use to pick up coal on the tracks, to heat our home. POP would take us kids and mom, to collect coal in sacks, to heat the house. We would spend all weekend doing this, along the tracks, that ran through the pine barrens. Oak

nord

Clinkers. Often brownish in color. Looks like someone melted ore of one kind or another. Usually bubbles evident and somewhat glass-like and irregular in shape.

Thank steam locomotives running hard with very hot fires and lots of draft. Clinkers are in essence the result of non flammable impurities in the coal which have been liquefied, cooled, then dumped onto the track bed.

clinker1
noun

1[mass noun] The stony residue from burnt coal or from a furnace.

1.1[count noun] A brick with a vitrified surface:
[as modifier] `clinker-brick walls'

fishkiller41

Either Clinker or Coke

spasmcreek

i walked a section of the ATSF track after they took out all the overhead lines and picked up the old green or clear insulators...knappers liked to get these as they could be melted down to blanks for knappping like flint ...modern glass will not work

nmyers

Along the Northeast corridor, they are arresting folks who walk along the train tracks. Too many folks getting killed by trains. At 90 mph or higher, they don't hear 'em coming until it's too late.

When my kids were young, I used to tell them at Christmas time to behave, or Santa Claus would leave them a stocking full of natural gas. (They've never seen coal, probably wouldn't know what it is.)

Neal

gunnut505

If you are in the R/R R.O.W, and within 45' of the tracks; you are "fouling the track", and can be arrested for trespassing, fined $10,000, and placed on a watch list.
The second time you get caught will not be so easy.
The insulators along the tracks are COLLECTIBLE, and worth so much more than a medium for creating phony arrowheads. Date nails, post nails, Osmose nails, certain spikes, and cutoff hunks of track are all valuable to railroadiana collectors. Some of the ancient barbed wire in the fences is also collectible.

If you insist on trespassing on R/R property, take at least one other person with you to watch for trains; that's how you get home alive with all your stolen booty.