Old Railroad tracks, Twenty six cents and hot rocks!

[Monty]

Went out this morning at daylight and worked about a hundred yards of where some old railroad (trolly) tracks use to be and is now a jogging path. Took the ACE and Kept getting some really strange readings at below 8".? Finally decided to dig down since the ground was soft from recent rain and see what it was.? To my surprise it was the rails from the old trolly tracks!? They just covered them up with backfill and built an asphalt jogging trail on top of them.? Usually they salvage the steel in them.? The backfill was tailings from I thought I had hit a gold mine until I dug a few and realized what I was up against!? the old huge smelter that use to be in town.? It seems half the backfill in the city was tailings from the smelter.? In the tailings was also dozens of what I am calling hot rocks.? They were about the diameter of a dime and about the same thickness (kinda square) and sounded off on the ACE just like a coin! They were found the entire length of the area I detected.? No telling what kind of metals were in them but they sure rained on my parade.? I did find $0.26 in clad but couldn't really work the area effectively due to the hot rocks.? They couldn't be discriminated out either.? Oh well, going to the beach with my new Sea Hunter tomorrow and see how that works.? Got a new scoop from Zeke and it is a dandy!? Excellent craftmanship and he made it to my personal specs.? What a deal!? ? JIM

 

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[vic910]

How disappointing! I hope you have better luck at the beach!

vicki

 

[allen]

that bites jim, better luck the next time. keep on digging !!!!

 

[Bavaria Mike]

Sometimes you get burned but it's always a good day out! Good luck with that new Sea Hunter, look forward to the finds! HH, Mike

 

[MUD(S.W.A.T)]

Ha ha my trusty Bounty Hunter Quick Draw II discs. out hot rocks! However my pinpointer picks them up so I still have to deal with them. I hate them as much as PT's. It seems me and you can't find good sites to save our lives.

Keep @ it and HH!!

 

[hollowpointred]

if you could find that trolly station those tracks led to that could be a goldmine!...good spots are hard to come by! case in point.......i checked an old high school built in 1925 this morning. there is so much trash on the athletic field it is unbelievable. you cant swing without getting two or three trash signals.......deep 6 and 7 inches deep.this was over the entire field!! i dug 1 clad dime and tons of old galvanized can scraps.some of those trash signals have got to be good stuff but it would take a lifetime to dig all of the signals! i did find an old perfume bottle next to a crappy old rusty bit of something. i guess i have to re think how im gonna hunt this place. maybe hit the perimeter of the site. less coins but also less trash. hey jim.........do you think that the GTI might do a better job at the trolly track site?

 

[JakePhelps]

At least you didnt come away with just some hot rocks Im sure you will have better luck in the water, i went out yesterday with the cobra and did good.

 

[MUD(S.W.A.T)]

hollowpointred,

You know what I would do with that Old School site? I would set my detector to coin or jewelry mode and disc. out all trash and find all the obvious good stuff. Then I would turn my disc. down and dig the good strong repeat hits. Then I would leave the rest for trash or dig the rest just in case. I always go back just in case but don't care as much about the site as I did at first. I go look for other sites with more obvious treasure.

If you can follow that,

Keep @ it and HH!!

 

[Monty]

Oh, I know where the old trolly station is and also where it use to turn around, but it is surrounded by acres of pavement. No grassy areas at all to detect. I rode the trolly as a child and it went out in about 1955 or 56. I'm not disappointed, I always wondered about that area where I tried my luck and I'm glad to know what the situation is. JIM

 

[hollowpointred]

"surrounded by acres of pavement"...........sounds like my situation here! well..........if they ever tear it up at least you have a jump on the compitition.........mud, thats pretty much the way i looked at it too. i set the ace to coin mode, and tried to only dig good repeatable signals. unfortunatly most of them were can slaw and scraps of who knows what. then i only dug deep repeatable signals with the same result. i just cant believe how trashy this athletic field is. it seems like it was a friggin dump at one time or another! i couldnt even hunt it a week ago cause the grass was up to my waist! i guess one way to look at it is that if it holds that much deeply buried,old trash, there is a chance that there is good stuff there too that others gave up on (just like me).i think i will put this site on the "B" list of places to go,and return someday with the understanding that im gonna have to dig a ton of trash,and then just dig em all.

 

[Monty]

I don't know that the GTI would do much better. Those trailings aren't "hot rocks" per se, just what they remind me of. They are a mixture of metal dross, no telling what and contain some copper, zinc, brass, and even some little bit of silver on occasion. Just no way to discriminate them. The smelter itself was on the federal superfund dirty list because of all the arsenic they used. Now a Wal-Mart Super Center sits on top of the site. But for years they used the tailings for fill, probably poisoned half the town! JIM