Thanks Pete: Interesting info. To clarify, the rail plate itself had the molded date on it. I did see the vertical month codes I I I I ...... I'll have to have another look for a numeric month code. Also interesting about the pounds/yard figure and that 85 is considered light today and a train would not be moving very fast on those rails. I have only witnessed a couple trains travelling that line. Speed was not a factor !! The first one was heard long before seen. It was crawling along. I first heard the "whistle" at some great distance and continued to hear it at fairly long intervals. There is a turn in the line about 5 miles from where we hike. Finally saw the train and thought we better remove ourselves from the right of way. We continued the hike in the stubble field. The train finally rolled by. Had a wave to the engineer and he back. But for the noise, we could have had a short conversation. He was taking cars to an elevator to take on a load of peas. I only know that because the next day, there was a continuous line of split peas in the snow along the rails. I wondered how much food was lost due to a leaking car.
One thing about this forum - there is a wide life experience knowledge base to shed light on many subject areas, including rail tie nails
Cheers,
Jack