German Railroad date nails adventure...

This adventure took place in August 2006 and was inspired by a forum friend that lives in Southern Arizona USA. I saved this post for winter when I got frozen in and that time is now, it was 13F/-11C yesterday morning. After reading many of my friend?s posts and seeing pictures about Railroad date nails and related finds, I set out to see how the Germans did it. I had no idea if they used date nails in railroad ties or what to expect from some areas of abandoned railroad track I knew of. Somehow lost several pictures from this post but?Still interesting! I had been driving by a railroad maintenance crew working a track all summer, their small depot of parts were situated at a spot when I noticed a pile of neatly stacked wooden RR ties getting bigger. I stopped one day to talk to the crew as they were near an easy access road by car. Talked to the foreman in charge and explained my curiosity and asked about the pile of wooden RR ties in the depot and wondered if they had any date nails. He knew what I was talking about and gave me permission to look through the pile as they were scheduled to be recycled. He also verified a nearby track had been abandoned and gave me permission to look for date nails and told me where to look for them, most of this track has been removed with the exception of bridges and road intersections that will be removed later. The German train system is owned by the government and not privatized. Here is where I will start a narrative picture post of German RR date nails. This is a picture of an area I knew of, the RR foreman told me about as well. The hotel on the right bought the field to the left from the RR, the tracks have been removed but still remain Gov property. You can see where the tracks once were. Near the wooded area at the end of the field is an old train station. I received permission from the hotel owner to detect the field but the owner warned me as the RR used this area as a collection point when removing the tracks. I only found bolts and iron pieces here.

A section of track at a road intersection with a few wooden RR ties, the Germans did not use many wooden RR ties over the past 100+ years. At the bottom of the picture in the middle of the tie you can see a date nail head.

Up close to a date nail, this is a 1961.

Found this snake in my venture along the tracks, it was a big one around 18?.

A railroad station built around 1856, unfortunately, I could not detect it as it has been rented out as a vacation home and there was nobody home. I did detect where the track was and surprised I did not find anything worth mentioning where the passengers boarded the train.

One of three bridges I walked along, this one has had the tracks removed. Along another bridge I was lucky to find an old pile of ties where I found the oldest date nails. The pile had been there so long they rotted together so I could not get to all the date nails with the tools I had.

An iron/steel RR tie dated 1905. All the ties are iron/steel with the exception of road intersections and the ends of bridges. The ties are approximately 30?/76cm tall, today they use cement ties about the same size.

Several of the date nails I found, had to pry them all out of a tie and none were detecting finds. An American 5 cent coin for size.

The oldest date nails I found, 1901, 1943 and a 1959. I found about 30 in all and left many in the ties. It was a fun adventure! We have about 10?/25CM of snow, now I have to go shovel the driveway. HH, Mike