Offered here is a 0.75” thick piece of “U-rail”.  The iron has been cleaned and coated and remains very well preserved. This piece was recovered from an unknown location.

The first railroad track widely laid in the United States was made of wooden stringers, running in the direction of travel, with a flat iron bar fastened to the top, called strap iron. This served until the locomotives began to grow in weight, crushing the wooden stringer and the iron bar. Only a very few of the poorest roads (like the Winchester & Potomac) were still using strap on their main lines by the time of the Civil War.

The replacement for strap iron was either U-rail, Pear-rail, or T-rail. U-rail formed an inverted U-shaped rail, on which the car’s wheels ran. U-iron was very good, but easily got out of alignment as the ground shifted. The South Side and Nashville & Chattanooga were the only major Confederate lines still extensively using U-rail throughout the war.  [jet] [ph:L]

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