Question: Length of Spikes Used at Promontory
From: pravoslavna@comcast.net
I've much enjoyed your website on the CPRR. Keep up the good work. I've been diligent reading all the fine pages you have posted, "studying up" for a retirement trip to Promontory that I'm planning after I wrap up a 43 year railroad career.
Here are two questions that you might be able to answer...
(1) What was the length of the spikes used by the CPRR in spiking down its 60 pound rail in the vicinity of Promontory?
(2) It appears that the original 60 pound rail over Promontory was never replaced with rail of a heavier section, as the literature indicates the rail retired in 1942 was still 60 pound rail. Would you agree with this?
Abram Burnett
New Cumberland, PA
posted from CPRR Discussion Group at 7:42 PM
3 Comments:
From: "Wendell Huffman" wendellhuffman@hotmail.com
I have a spike which I believe to date from original construction of the Central Pacific. Its shaft measures 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch and overall it is 5-1/2 inches long. I compared it side by side with a replica gold spike a few year ago and it is the same size.
I'd be surprised if the old line around Promontory was not relaid at some time with steel rail (which may very well have weighed the same as the original iron rail, but being steel allowed for greater rail-life and train weight).
Wendell
From: "Randy Hees" hees@rcn.com
From the "Western Pacific Railroad, Report of the Commissioners on 1st section" Dec 10 1866,
"The Spikes are 5 1/2 inches long and 9/16 of an inch square"
This section was built by the original corporation, which within two years would be taken over by Central Pacific interests. This was the only section of the WP to use chairs instead of fish plates.
From the "Western Pacific Railroad, Report of the Commissioners on 2nd section" Aug 31, 1869.
"The weight of the rails is not less than 56 pounds per yard. They are connected by fish joints.... The rails used are generally twenty-eight feet in length. The spikes are of wrought iron, five and one inches in length, nine sixteenths of an inch square, weigh one half pound each, and number about ten thousand five hundred per mile, upon straight lines, the number being increased upon curves."
By now the WP is owned by and run by the Central Pacific. The section described above was completed immediately after the section at Promitory, and most likely used the same track standards (and materials)
Randy Hees
From: littlechoochoo81@netzero.net
The spikes in use in 1869 and before and after were 9/16 x 5 1/2 of wrought iron. The rails in 1869 at Promontory were 56 pounds to the yard. In the late 1870's et sequi rails were changed out to 75 and 76 pounds per yard. This latter weight was unique to CP/SP as far as I know. The 75 pound pattern had a pound added to it in the head area. If you have sufficient interest you can probably tell what brands of rail of 56 pound weight were used in the Promontory by reviewing the testimony in the Pacific Railway Hearings held by a committee of Congress in 1887-88. There are tables showing weights of rail by mile posts and if memory serves it also shows the brands. In 1869 Promontory was at milepost 690, being from Sacramento. The rail from Lucin to near Kelton was changed to 35 pound from the Carson and Colorado line which was taken up and abandoned in the late '30's between Mina, Nevada and Laws, California. This small rail was put in at the start of World War II for use in western US Army depots. When I first hired out at SP in 1948 someone had sent D. J. Russell, who became SP's president about 1950, a template of this 35 pound rail saying it was the original rail used at Promontory. Nice try but no cigar. There were two kinds of track spikes used, one, the familiar one we see today with the lip on top at the same angle as the "bevelled" edge at the bottom of the spike, and the same design except the bottom edge was 90 degrees off from the top lip. The reason for the second type was for use on spiking rails on longitudinal wooden stringers underneath the rail so that the cutting edge of the spike would be across the grain of the wood just as the common track spike cuts across the grain of a cross or switch tie. I found one of the second type one day while walking through the Sacramento shop area. It probably had been used on the wooden stringers that lined locomotive pits in the shops before the advent of concret sills. It is (was) the only one of that type I have ever known. Sadly, when I moved to the Seattle area in 2001 the box in which it reposed along with other artifacts "disappeared" from the moving van somewhere along the route.
Lynn Farrar
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