weird stuff you find on the tracks

while walking down the tracks today i look over along the tracks and theres a coupler just laying there then about 5 min later i see a huge wrench it must have weighed 50 or 60 pounds i guess it was for working on trains and right next to the wrench there was 4 books from the Milwaukee railroad on parts of trains there like 50 pages about working on trains it was weird because trains go real fast through there they never are going slow or stop and theres like tress and bushes on each side, i wonder how this stuff got there.. i have found other stuff in the like shoes and clothes.. oh yeah i found a BNSF hard hat once.. share any weird stuff you have found along the tracks

i found a FRED next to the tracks. it looked like it had been there for a while. i'm not sure if thats a common find or not though.btw there has already been atleast 1 other thread on this.

found somthing the other day that kind of spooked me out. I tripped over this binder with a big thick manual for some kind of "self contained breathing apparatus" with a generic company name and some long product number next to it. the cover had a picture of a guy wearing the device, with a huge face mask and all kinds of hoses and a big tank strapped to his back. Probably fell out of one of the MOW cars that they have stored there to be scrapped....

got me a pair of those safty glasses the workers wear the other day, and one of those bright orange vests.... soon i be able to run up in any yard dressed like a worker....... and for free too!:D :D :D

cp rail hard hat

a bunch of lockers like ya know gym lockers.

a few cases of the blue water that happened to go missing as well as a case of crackers. if you dont know about blue water youre sleeping.

tons and tons of waterbottles! my old layup was the trashiest place because apparently while they were switching cars, they throw their trash bags out...full of old timetables and printouts, water bottles full of sunflower seed shells and chew, its disgusting...

Re: weird stuff you kind on the tracks

Originally posted by FR8 LIFE

while walking down the tracks today i look over along the tracks and theres a coupler just laying there then about 5 min later i see a huge wrench it must have weighed 50 or 60 pounds i guess it was for working on trains and right next to the wrench there was 4 books from the Milwaukee railroad on parts of trains there like 50 pages about working on trains it was weird because trains go real fast through there they never are going slow or stop and theres like tress and bushes on each side, i wonder how this stuff got there..

No mystery here. Those knuckle couplers break off once in a while. They weigh about 80 lbs. One must have broken off, they stopped the train, got out the tools and the manuals, and put the new one on. Then in their hurry to leave they left the other stuff behind (or, that wrench and those manuals were the ones that proved useless among those that were tried, so they left them behind).

Re: Re: weird stuff you kind on the tracks

Originally posted by Cracked Ass

 

No mystery here. Those knuckle couplers break off once in a while. They weigh about 80 lbs. One must have broken off, they stopped the train, got out the tools and the manuals, and put the new one on. Then in their hurry to leave they left the other stuff behind (or, that wrench and those manuals were the ones that proved useless among those that were tried, so they left them behind).

YEAH THETAS WHAT I THOUGHT BUT I FOUND THE BIG WRENCH AND MANUALS AFTER ABOUT 5 OR 10 MINUETS OF FINDING THE COUPLER SO I GUESS SOME ONE PROBABLE MOVED THE STUFF FROM THE ORIGINAL LOCATION.. THAT WOULD BE COOL TO SEE A TRAIN GOING ABOUT 30 MPH AND HAVE A COUPLER SNAP OFF

;)

i had a lengthy stand off with a skunk the other day....other than that just typical bum stuff....sometimes i wonder why it was brought down there (a record player???) but thats it, mostly garbage....

dogs

Painting today... I went in some THORN bushes to grab an old bucket to stand on and there was a dead dog with its face all smashed in right by the bucket. And one time I found my gloves that I lost the night before when I went back for pictures.

Re: Re: Re: weird stuff you kind on the tracks

Originally posted by FR8 LIFE

 

YEAH THETAS WHAT I THOUGHT BUT I FOUND THE BIG WRENCH AND MANUALS AFTER ABOUT 5 OR 10 MINUETS OF FINDING THE COUPLER SO I GUESS SOME ONE PROBABLE MOVED THE STUFF FROM THE ORIGINAL LOCATION.. THAT WOULD BE COOL TO SEE A TRAIN GOING ABOUT 30 MPH AND HAVE A COUPLER SNAP OFF

If by "5 or 10 minutes" you mean "much further down the tracks", that's no mystery either. The train would still take a long time to stop after the incident, so the repair could have been done quite a ways away from where the knuckle dropped.

I don't know if it would happen at 30mph. I was under the impression that couplers more commonly snap during humping operations. Of course, there's always the various shocks associated with slack action when the train changes speed, so it's possible.

While i was walking the tracks in search of layups i kept seeing grocery carts and tires and shit, now i know this is not umcommon shit on the tracks but it was like 30 minutes downt he tracks, who would carrie that shit that far? but i always find those little juice bottles and i found a box of orange rusto cans of to the side were they were doin construction. it was a box of 6 full cans of caution orange, it was great. and i found a box car, i was walking the tracks and out of no were way back in the middle of some woods theres this box car, only one and theres no layups around there, why would it just be setting there, its been on there for like a week now, if its there two much longer ima paint it, it has a chisme piece on one side already. later CLUEone

I find alot of worker gloves and water bottles, but I've also found thing's like lantern's, knives, cases of sticker paper, and the best thing I've seen I just discovered about a month ago...I was walking down the track's (alot further down than usual because I had nothing at all to do that day) and as I'm going I see this little, blue, thing sticking out of the ground.Now I'm thinking that it's a like an indicator for an electrical, wire or something, but then why is it so close to the track?As I got closer I saw that it was a wooden headstone that said ...

R.I.P.

BIG BLUE

"things wont be the same you" and it had a big CONRAIL logo on it.I thought that was pretty cool, and thought about taking it home, but then I decided that it's better to leave it there if some worker took time to make this thing and place it down the track's as some kind of memorial for CONRAIL Kind of brought a tear to my eye.........."but then i found some glass bottles to throw rock's at and that pussy cryin feelin went away"-late

refrigerator, pile of rusting washer and dryer parts, old ass type writer from the good ol days....the workers tell me that the fridge is from some dumbass punks (toys no doubt) breaking into the boxcars and pulling out the cargo...the pile of rusting washer and dryer parts from a derailment a while back...the yard here serves a manufacturer of fridges, washers and dryers.....i seen alot of racoons in the woods by the yard too....

little mounds of sugar in the middle of some tracks...at first i thought it was snow or ice because it's as hard as ice it's so compressed.

but then i saw some bees on it and remembered it was way too warm for there to be snow or ice on the ground...

also a bunch of metal posts with a sort of clamp at the bottom and attached to the top a square stop sign, almost like a metal flag...

when I was in Buffalo, we walked some tracks leading out of a very large conrail yard and we found various dead Deer. These thinga must have gotten SMOKED because they were shredded, it was disgusting. We found shopping carts, all sorts of metal poles, empty milk jugs, airbrake hoses, rats everywhere...

Up here in the pacific northwest though, we generally find things like workers gloves, water bottles, cupplings, airbrake hoses again, various trash that pedestrians leave laying on the tracks while taking a shortcut down the lines, grain everywhere, always, falling out of the hoppers. Beer cans, obviously.. paint cans sometimes. I don't know how often I find myself in a yard or layup, or even on a line of track and i find myself cleaning up some other idiots lids, or cans, or anything else. Its fucking ridiculous.

MEEP.

Kaes the little mounds of sugar are from hoppers that are leaking. it's not just sugar you can find all kinds of stuff that they carry. i've seen several piles of tiny pieces of broken glass all different colors. i'm guessing they came from a hopper too.

Originally posted by kaesthebluntedwonder

little mounds of sugar in the middle of some tracks...at first i thought it was snow or ice because it's as hard as ice it's so compressed.

but then i saw some bees on it and remembered it was way too warm for there to be snow or ice on the ground...

also a bunch of metal posts with a sort of clamp at the bottom and attached to the top a square stop sign, almost like a metal flag...

theres a name for that but im drawing a blank at the moment. used to release the brakes i think?

Re: Re: Re: Re: weird stuff you kind on the tracks

Originally posted by Cracked Ass

 

If by "5 or 10 minutes" you mean "much further down the tracks", that's no mystery either. The train would still take a long time to stop after the incident, so the repair could have been done quite a ways away from where the knuckle dropped.

I don't know if it would happen at 30mph. I was under the impression that couplers more commonly snap during humping operations. Of course, there's always the various shocks associated with slack action when the train changes speed, so it's possible.

ALWAYS COMEIN WITH THE KNOWLEDGE CRACKED THANKS.. YEAH I WOULD THINK IT WOULD HAPPEN WITH HUMPING TOO BUT WHERE I FOUND THE COUPLER WAS ON A MAIN LINE AND TRAINS MOVE THROUGH THERE PRETTY FAST.. OH AND LETS NOT ALL FOR GET RAILROD SPIKES I SEE HUNDERS OF THOSE ;)

Re: dogs

Originally posted by CelfOneAlphatects

Painting today... I went in some THORN bushes to grab an old bucket to stand on and there was a dead dog with its face all smashed in right by the bucket. And one time I found my gloves that I lost the night before when I went back for pictures.

genius

Originally posted by CLUEone

While i was walking the tracks in search of layups i kept seeing grocery carts and tires and shit, now i know this is not umcommon shit on the tracks but it was like 30 minutes downt he tracks, who would carrie that shit that far? but i always find those little juice bottles and i found a box of orange rusto cans of to the side were they were doin construction. it was a box of 6 full cans of caution orange, it was great. and i found a box car, i was walking the tracks and out of no were way back in the middle of some woods theres this box car, only one and theres no layups around there, why would it just be setting there, its been on there for like a week now, if its there two much longer ima paint it, it has a chisme piece on one side already. later CLUEone

i hate this.

i found this plastic tag that says WARNING DO NOT REMOVE..wonder what it is

this summer, while walking the tracks...i found a subwoofer, a clogged rusto fat, and on this bridge, there was graff saying something about reefer smokers. it was written in like 1988 or something. i also found the electrical thing on the rails for the little stop sign at the rxr crossing. i couldnt figure out how 2 work it tho. i alsso found signs of a big "W" on them. they had bullet holes in em.

oh shit how could i forget? i also found a towel with something wrapeed up inside it. it was a turd inside..

a friend of mine had told me about a good bridge to catch some flicks and piece...well he told me to run across the trussel (i think that's the proper name for the railroad bridges) and about 400 yards up there should be the underpass. well im walking through this rail in the woods at 10:30 PM, i can't see shit, and im weilding a can of spraypaint in my beanie to beat the shit out of anyone that approached me..and i usually don't get scared in situations like this. well i found the bridge and i got closer and i coulda sworn things...i walked a little closer and there was probably 5-10 people sittin around a small fire jabberin'. i just walked through and minded my business...i didn't notice shit for graffiti...just drunks. god what a great guy to lead me to such a place!

Tools and gloves

I found a pair of 1st class needle-nose pliers some UP worker must have dropped, and some "Work Safely" UP-logo work gloves. I find hardhats from time-to-time, but they are usually broken or scuffed up very badly. I see fish plates and tie-plates all the time, and spikes. Sometimes I'll see a long 18" or 24" tie-plate in a jungle, being used as a griddle over the fire.

Around the Houston area we see hundreds and hundreds of blue plastic water bottles. It's real hot here in the summer, and the train crews drink a lot of water and then pitch the bottles all over the place.

The grossest thing I've found turned out to be a very large, dead German Shepherd wrapped up in plastic. I thought it was a dead body and called the cops. They were kind of pissed, but all I could think about was that maybe it was a dead kid. One cop told me "I would have been suspicious too, with it all wrapped up like that." It stunk bigtime like death. Gross.

those water bottles are left by workers.the train companys buy tons of water for the workers to have when theyre working!ive found all kinds of shit!one time i found some ones clothes in the back of a hopper.

i found a large scap piece of a boxcar laying on the side of the tracks. how it got there i have no clue. railroad water bottles. clothes dead shit buckets of spikes wrenches shovels and othere dumb trash.

when i go to the yards, it pretty dark, but when i bench

oh man, do i find things. i found bikes, worker gloves,

beer bottles, and are you ready, one time i found.........

a set of toy tracks (the ones that come with toy train sets)!!!!

hoLLa

flipwriter, you talking about that certian underpass with the model train tracks scattered all over the place?