Category Archives: News
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Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum
Centramod is working with the Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum to build a new model train layout for display in the museum. The layout is nearly complete and there was a ribbon cutting ceremony on Friday April 15th at 10:30 am.
For more information on the Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum, visit http://www.rrhm.org/
Hurricane IKE Forces Train Show Cancellation
The Train Show scheduled for this weekend, September 20th and 21st has been CANCELLED due to Hurricane IKE evacuees being sheltered at the show site, Temple’s Mayborn Convention Center.
All advance ticket and vendor table sales will be refunded.
CentraMod will have an open house from 1-5 PM Saturday, September 20th. A drawing will be held for the raffle layout and Amtrak tickets at the end of the open house. Raffle tickets will be available for sale during the open house and you do not have to be present to win. Click here for directions to the clubhouse.
Please tell any others you know who may have attended the show in the past.
Since there was some confusion the last time a similar cancellation occured, the model railroad club which hosts the Temple Train Show is not affiliated with the Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum. The museum does have some activities planned for Saturday, September 20th. Go to www.rrhm.org for more information on the museum’s activities.
Train Campers Receive RR Date Nail
On Wednesday, June 13th, 25 children aged 7 to 11 visited CentraMod to learn about modeling and running trains. They visited on the second day of a three day “Train Camp” experience that was offered through the Temple Railroad and Heritage Museum.
At the end or their day at CentraMod, the children received a date nail as part of their care package.
Railroad tie date nails have a date stamped in their head. For example, a nail with a “41” is from 1941. They are usually 2 1/2″ long, with 1/4″ shanks. Date nails were driven into railroad ties, bridge timbers, utility poles, mine props, and other wooden structures for record keeping purposes.
If a railroad wanted to use date nails, they would order the kind of nails they wanted (for instance, a 2 1/2″ x 3/16″ steel nail, round with raised numerals “34”). The nails were driven into ties either at the treating plant to indicate the year of treatment, or at the track to indicate the year the tie was laid.
When a rotted or mechanically damaged tie was removed, the date on the nail was noted. Ties were never removed because of age, so date nails did not tell the railroad when to replace ties. Some railroads found that dated ties lasted longer than usual because the men took special care of them.
In the first decade of the 20th century, railroads which used date nails drove them into every treated tie. Some railroad found this type of record keeping method to be a failure. Beginning in 1909, some railroads focus on keeping records of special test sections. This method proved to be more accurate and far more economical for these railroads instead of tracking several million ties. However, by the early 1920’s most railroads had returned to the practice of placing nails in every treated tie.
Railroads needed a way to monitor their investment in treating, and date nails became the most common method of this record keeping.
For additional information, be sure to check out Jeff’s Date Nail Page.