Railroad tracks

[ghost]

I think I will do research over the winter to see about abandon railroad tracks in my area. I was thinking about maybe doing some digging in the general area along the tracks if I ever fine one.
I live in the Northern Virginia area of Loundoun.



I dig metal detecting.

 

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[digger460]

Going to do the same thing next year. Have '52 aerial of where they used to be in 1900. I'd never find them without that. Good Luck! Try historicaerials.com if you don't know exactly where they are.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

You're not likely to get anything by just randomly walking old RR tracks. Your best bet is where the train stopped to let on and off passengers. Ie.: wherever people congregated.

 

[Cletus]

from what i have read they used the RR tracks as much as roads during the civil war for troop movement.

 

[TheHunterGT]

Santa Fe wagon trail runs right through La Junta, Colorado where I live. La Junta = The Junction...as tons of routes branch off from here. You can actually see the wagon ruts in a 3-4 different spots within a few miles of me....and in numerous places for a good 20-30 miles each side of me.

They literally built some of the railroad running to Santa Fe right on top of the wagon tracks back in the day. My buddy is a train engineer and he says many stretches of the tracks are original from late 1800's to early 1900's.

Many of the off/on spots are pretty obvious from Google maps.....huge square sections you will see every few miles near a town or where a town used to be. I have not detected any of them yet...but I fully plan on it next year. Should hopefully be some good stuff. People going in and out of their pocket for tickets and change and pocket watches....hopefully some good drops.