But I have little doubt the railroads could sell them if they wanted to. Likewise, I've walked miles along rusted abandoned track in Indiana, Oregon, and elsewhere.
The tracks in Indiana I know were abandoned sometime prior to The ones here in Oregon have trees thicker than my thigh grown between them. The old rails are certainly reused frequently here in the UK - they start off being used on high-speed lines. When they're too worn for that they get reused on low-speed lines, and then again on rarely-used sidings spurs in US parlance.
Once they're too worn to be used as rails at all, they get reused for other things - e. The ones you mention as being still in place may well be because the line in question hasn't been officially closed - that's certainly the case in many places in Europe where lines were just mothballed when services finished, allowing them to be easily reopened if a new service needed them whereas here they were ripped up very quickly and the land sold off.
You are too late. A great tonnage of rail has already been used in the US. There is not "much" left in terms of serious usage. RR rails are hard, that is to say, they have a relatively high carbon content, so they can't be made into just anything. Concrete rebar WAS a perfect match for old rails, so essentially all old rail became rebar.
Rebar is relatively high strength. Rail does wear-out so there was a steady supply for many years but as rail lines were taken out of service and changed from 2 or 3 tracks to one because computers can manage scheduling trains going two directions on the same track , the amount of rail available has shrunk.
ASTM first wrote specification for new steel rebar in the 70's because old rail had met most of the demand up to that time and there was little demand for "new" rebar.
The upside, new rebar is more or less weldable, the rail-rebar would normally crack if welded. I expect in the US, there is not often enough rail in most areas, so the old rail just goes into steel scrap to be remelted.
I can't imagine what you are talking about when you say "scrap yards are prohibited from buying old rail" other than the length may be a problem to handle without proper equipment. And railroads don't use old rail because it is worn out; sort of like putting a bald tire on a car because it can still hold air. On the active railroads which you should not be walking on, by the way , you're seeing evidence of recent maintenance-of-way. It is SOP in the rail business to pre-position supplies weeks or months in advance, and then take up to a year to pick up the old scrap.
That is because of MoW priorities - they need to do work on northern climes while the weather is favorable, so work in Texas may get put on hold for months Or traffic conditions, railroad is too busy to hand it to MoW forces for an afternoon Or simple availability of the machines - it would be insane to pay crews to pick it up by hand when they have a Giant Magnet Machine that can pick it all up while traversing at 10 miles per hour which matters due to track downtime.
But they may have only two Machines in 20, miles of track, so they have to wait, wait, wait for the beast's availability. It's typical for your basic suburban NIMBY type to figure that trains are yesterday's news, and all those tracks oughta just dry up and die. However that is not true at all. Rail can move 1 ton of freight miles on 1 gallon of fuel, so this is actually fairly "eco" conpared to trucks - nevermind that two train crew can move 20, tons of freight as opposed to only 80 tons if they were truck drivers.
Further, rail is the only transport mode that lends itself to electrification, so it could clean up as the grid does. Heck, the John Bull could celebrate its th anniversary by steaming down any random freight line, the Acela line, or indeed, the TGV lines.
They are that compatible. And nobody ever complained about railroad electrification using minerals that are toxic to manufacture - it's just steel, copper and aluminum. That dormant not abandoned rails-in-place rail line can always be reactivated. Which means industry can go right back to taking rail service, or passenger lines can be extended on the cheap. That's so expensive that I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times it has happened.
Much worse, many abandoned railroads are vulnerable to reversion - rather than buy the land outright, the rail company bought an easement conditional that when the railroad goes away, the land goes back to the underlying landowner. That means the right-of-way itself gets busted up; now you've got an apartment building on the right-of-way, and you'd have to buy it and destroy it to put the railroad back in.
Here's a success story: the Susquehanna Railroad. Their operations shrunk over the years, and part of their line was disused. Some motorcar collectors got permission to cut the trees growing up in the track, using the motorcars to get access. Their real goal was to have a place to ride their motorcars!
As business at the Port of Newark grew, there was an opportunity to run massive container trains instead of trucks. Thanks 1 Thanked 87 Times in 37 Posts.
I live right next to a track and I don't touch them. I have a few spikes I picked up as a kid, also coal and the glass insulators from when the telegraph lines ran along the tracks. However, the rail, majority of spikes, plates, etc. I just leave be. I drive pass a section of rail just tossed to the side of the track every day. Granted, I so want to cut it up and use or recycle it but I just drive by. Before the county widened and paved the road my family owned the land right up to the right-of-way.
So many times over the years stuff was tossed on "our" side of the property line. Now it's all RR or county property. Can still find items if I pulled out my metal detector and went lookin. Highly doubt the scrap yards would take it.
That officer's sole job is to find metal theifs or people suspected of such thefts. I applaud it, but also keep waiting to get a visit from them. Why I take pictures and document everything I get.
Location, time, date, etc. Thanks 5 Thanked Times in Posts. We call that stuff OTM other track material. It is great scrap However, no honest yard would take that or rail without proper documentation. Pass on it, it'll just be a legal headache if you get caught.
Thanks 0 Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts. Originally Posted by PistoneScrapProcessing. Thanks 99 Thanked Times in Posts. If this in an old post my bad but It all depends on your location, and the rail roads location, also how uncaring your local yards may be. I have a few new yards here that visually inspect nearly everything, have a radiation detector on the incoming side of the scale, and make you get the sticker on freon units, needless to say I wouldn't suggest taking Rail Roads to a yard like that, but if abandoned, like say by the "rail trail" bike path, i would gather that up and go to the yard down the road.
They usually take just about anything, even the more questionable items, usually no questions asked. There used to be a young hispanic guy come in with a slammed honda civic with 10 buckets of copper literally every day and no one even questioned him. I almost said something, but didn't want to get involved in something like that being just out of high school.
Last edited by ScrapmanIndustries; at PM. Thanks Thanked 2, Times in Posts. Originally Posted by ScrapmanIndustries. Originally Posted by alloy2. Uh what happened to the young Hispanic guy. RR steel is out of bounds unless you can prove Providence. Replies: 42 Last Post: , PM. Replies: 0 Last Post: , AM. Replies: 20 Last Post: , AM. Material that has been cast i. Contaminated Broken with Clips.
Inclusive of Pandrol Clips, Bolts, Screws, etc. Steel Sleepers. Rough tumbled-could include attachments such as clips, etc. Stacked attachments removed. Mixed scrap. Material that does not fall into other categories; Mixture of metals. Steel rods, machine removed from concrete sleepers. For more information, including material grading and the tender process itself, please see below our Customer Information Pack. Metals Information Pack.
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