I am not sure if I posted my own rail anvil here or not?? Old age you know heehehheh
But in case I didn't here it is.
A section of track, and some ground engagement steel (cutting lip) from a backhoe repair job.  The cutting lip steel is pretty hard, also but super tough.  The side gussets are because its the weakest part of any rail anvil. The narrow waist.  I had the welder cranked up hot for this job!! 300 amps from a big old 3phase Miller, but the old rheostat was pretty grungy at that point, so it wasn't really the full 300.
   
  yours Scott

First time I've seen the anvil.  Can't say it's pretty, but it looks like it will really do the job.  I like the idea of hard and tough steel, but I don't know this stuff.  Tell me more!

Thanks Branson
  Well it will do a small job. Fortunately most of my work is small.
  Nobody ever offered me a real anvil, not one. I have seen a lot of them change hands but never to me.

Plowing straight into the earth and rocks will wear regular steel away very quickly, you can imagine.
They weld a special steel to the fronts of loader buckets and backhoe buckets and caterpillar blades, etc.
Its harder, but its mostly 10 times tougher than regular steel.
In time even this wears away.
  So once or twice in the life of every large earth moving machine, the old lip is cut off and a new one welded on.
Its a pretty big job. The steel is over an inch thick on a Caterpillar 950 loader.  This is a medium/small sized loader with tires about as tall as a man, btw.
Cutting off the old lip and installing a new one took us 1 1/2 days at the mine where I worked. A guy had started it and when I came on shift I worked on it all shift (in between regular duties) and then he finished it up next day.
The old lip was gone in the middle, but short sections along the outside edges had lots of meat left.

The rail is a fairly large size rail. Rails come in lots of sizes. There were several sections of it piled up in back of one of the buildings. Its kind of a trip cutting rail and cutting lip steel. Turning a torch up to a long flame and advancing slow and steady.

  I use the little anvil inside my shop and it serves for light duty.
I still need a real anvil for serious work.
  Every week I hear of another Peter Wright or Fisher. Some 22 year old newbie just back from a yard sale with another one, sincerely asking me if its any good.  Like I have personal experience.
Practically everyone I know back east has 3 or 4 laying around.  Todd Hughes won't even buy them anymore unless they are super special and near free, because he has them stacked and piled dangerously high all over the place already.
  sigh
yours Scott

Hmm, heh, you have the only manganese steel anvil I have ever seen.
I hope you aren't planning to put a hardy hole in it tho - P

Quote from: BruceS on October 02, 2011, 08:40:08 PM
Word of WARNING   I have a 5' piece of RR track ( very old and super rusty) that I tried to Scrap.     The kid at the yard said  " I don't see that !!  and you better hide it.   It's a Federal offense to have it with out the proper paper work and bill of sale ! "    I checked it out !  He was right.     Even if a line was abandoned the RR still owns the rails,  Plates and spikes .

Second that. Railroad track is private property. I tried to score a couple feet from a track replacement crew, but every inch has to be accounted for.

A while back there was a guy celling 3" sticks of RR track on ebay and I see it sold out of salvage yards all of the time here in Phoenix...

Guess I'm a Federal offender.  I found a 12 inch section of track abandoned along side of a RXR, along with several of the plates -- the result of a repair.
Picked up the section and one of the plates. 

Quote from: BruceS on October 02, 2011, 08:40:08 PM
Word of WARNING   I have a 5' piece of RR track ( very old and super rusty) that I tried to Scrap.     The kid at the yard said  " I don't see that !!  and you better hide it.   It's a Federal offense to have it with out the proper paper work and bill of sale ! "    I checked it out !  He was right.     Even if a line was abandoned the RR still owns the rails,  Plates and spikes .

Not all rail of this type is owned/used by railroads. There are millions of overhead cranes on industrial sites that run on rails.
V/8

Quote from: BruceS on October 02, 2011, 08:40:08 PM
Word of WARNING   I have a 5' piece of RR track ( very old and super rusty) that I tried to Scrap.     The kid at the yard said  " I don't see that !!  and you better hide it.   It's a Federal offense to have it with out the proper paper work and bill of sale ! "    I checked it out !  He was right.     Even if a line was abandoned the RR still owns the rails,  Plates and spikes .

  Burden of proof would be on the authorities as to which rail-road originally owned it, when they lost possession, how, and who had it next. My dad used to have an 18" section. No idea where it came from.

I have two-four foot sections of smaller rail that originally came from the coal mines, sometime around the 40's or 50's. My grandpa had it on his farm. There are plates welded to each end, and look like someone used them as shoring posts or something. I'd like to see them find who originally owned those. Grandpa's been gone since 1967, and none of the mines that operated back then are still in business.

My little scrap of rail came from Noranda Gray Eagle mine. I worked there a decade and a 1/2.
Lots of old rail came from mines. Private property.
  yours Scott