I made a rubbing if this rail profile and measured approximately:
Head 2 1/8"
Depth 4"
Base 3 3/4"

I believe this is related to an old quarry spur that would have connected to the C.C.C. & St. L. railroad.

Trying to estimate rail type/weight, perhaps age etc.

I have a section of Manx Norther Railway 56 lb/yd. steel rail on my desk which is also 4" high but wider in the head by 1/8" and the foot is 4" wide. My guess would be that yours is in the region of 50 - 55 lb/yd.
Ray.

Cool. Thank you. Here's an old picture of the quarry back in the day. I think it might have been narrow guage possibly, and have not identified the locomotives used.

According to this chart, you are looking at maybe 50# ASCE rail:

http://www.akrailroad.com/products/tee- ... ction-data

If that rubbing is indicative of the rail's profile, it would tell me that the rail is most likely wrought iron and probably dates from the 1850s to 1870s.

5607 is my best guess. 56#. An oddball. Ref. the bottom of this list: http://www.icrr.net/rails.htm

Definitely an oddball. The quarry spur ran along a river and was damaged or destroyed by floods a few times since the 1800s. This is where I found the rail and obtained the rubbing. Looks like some sort of primitive water control barrier.

It this is rail from the 1880s, it is likely a pre-ASCE standard rail. We did a project using very, very used rail which had previously been at NatCap, just inside our new buildings. It was very close to 60AS, but annoyingly the fishing was 1/8" shorter and we didn't get as many joint bar pairs as we got sticks. I had to take 60AS bars and mill the top surface down to get a correct fit. The rail mill marks identified it as a Penn Steel 58# section, but didn't give an exact section number. An old Pennsylvania catalog page matched up exactly with the dimensions as Pennsylvania section number 7, a 58# section.

You are probably in a similar boat. If you can find any kind of surviving mill mark on the web that would give you a clue at least to the manufacturer. Trying to match up by dimensions when the rail is old and worn is difficult. Overall height is almost always diminished from nominal, and depending on side wear and if the rail was turned in service, head width is also suspect.

In theory you could trace the outline of the section, use a CAD program to compute the enclosed area, and then use the density of steel to figure out the nominal weight per yard.

I visited this site more than once inspecting for any kind of markings. The rust is starting to win, some of these have holes through the webbing.

I was surprised to find any rails. In about a mile and a half of track, at least 50% or more is urban, and the rest in wooded park land. I found a couple of spots with exposed ties but no hardware or rails. Repurposed, I guess.

One other question, it doesn't appear that there is any ballast around the ties. It could be that I am just not seeing it. Did they ever lay track directly in the soil in early days?

Yup, especially “temporary” track. Also consider entropy. Cinder ballast can go away fairly quickly over time. Stone can fill up with dirt and gradually disperse. There was a small narrow gauge railway that served a sandstone quarry in the Cuyahoga Valley NP. The quarry was last used in the thirties. Most people wouldn’t even recognize that a railroad was once there. The trail in partially follows the old rail bed. You can still locate bits and pieces of track components in the undergrowth if you pay close attention but other than that, nature has had its way.

The second photo showing a line of rails driven into the earth illustrates a remedy for areas of unstable subgrade, typically adjacent to water.

The problem was, the subgrade would "slip" or "sink" without warning and it was believed the rails would arrest the movement in the subgrade. Unfortunately, the rails were simply insufficient to resist the forces involved but there was an argument the "rail fence" may have enabled detection of settlement before the trackage would had time to slip/sink to a catastrophic degree.

One such area was between Charleston and Blue Creek WVA on the east bank of the Elk River, originally part of the B&O and later acquired by Conrail and used to reach the Hitop Branch.

Slips and sinks were a serious threat for which imaginative solutions were attempted.

Above Tinker's Creek in Bedford OH the C&P (PRR) had raised its line using fill material including a large mass of clay, which was unstable. The increasing overburden of added fill only aggravated the instability as the pressure would cause the deep clay to "rotate".

At that location, the solution (in the 1980s) was to keep the gauge filled with track ballast so that the track could be raised and tamped, with minimal interruption of service on what was for Conrail, a busy Main Line.

Interesting, almost looks like the old iron pear rail. Over the years i have found pcs. of old iron rail in Ohio. Some were tossed over the right of ways due to breakage, used as pilings at river locations ect. I know where there is still a full pc. burried along a old quarry spur, that still has a rail chair attached at the one end. I know of another pc. burried in the ground at a old iron furnace in Southern Ohio. I have found several different sizes but its kind of hard to calculate the size due to wear, the years of rusting away in the elements or being burried. I have one 2 ft pc. I cut off a rail that was burried after being thrown off the side of the 1872 double stone arched LS&MS bridge at Wakeman, Ohio. It may have come off the previous wood trestle as the line dates to 1852 . It was one of the inner guard rails as the end is beat down to a taper. Its some pretty small stuff and is only 3 1/2" high but the other measurements are the same as the pc. you did the rubbing from. The various types of rail chairs they used at the rail joints are just as interesting.

Thanks everyone for the info, much appreciated!

Interesting. I have a piece like that that was on my Uncles farm in Minnesota and used as an anvil. It’s only a foot long. The only difference is that the head on mine is 2 1/4 inches wide.