A
big surprise came in the mail yesterday, an ET&WNC spike recovered from work on the right of way just before you get to the first tunnel and covered Deck Bridge while heading toward Hampton from Elizabethton, just shy of milepost 13 on the old 3-foot gauge line. The man who sent it to me is with the crew clearing the old railroad right of way to extend the hiking trail from Elizabethton (I assume with new bridges eventually). That line never had standard gauge tracks on it, so now I know
for sure I have a 3-foot gauge spike from the ET&WNC!
I had bought a couple of badly-worn spikes a few years ago from when they ripped out the tracks downtown Elizabethton, and I was surprised to see those matched the one I just got. Clearly they came from the same batch. While I assumed the other two (which I had cleaned up and painted) were from the steam era due to how badly pitted they were, I know for sure this one is as it came from a spot that was nowhere near the dual gauge and was ripped up in 1951.
Front to back:
1. Spike recovered from the Doe River Gorge from the 'Hillbilly World' tourist operation
2. ET&WNC spike recovered from the right of way between Valley Forge and tunnel one heading toward Hampton
3. ET&WNC spike from downtown Elizabethton
4. Modern sample spike, chromed
This shows the two ET&WNC spikes I painted with my latest narrow gauge one:
As I had no way to know if the first two were around the narrow gauge era (as they came from the standard gauge tracks in Elizabethton when they were ripped up in the early 2000s), preservation wasn't that big a deal to me. But this
known narrow gauge spike, there's no way I'll paint it.
I'm looking for something to mount it to so I can hang it on the wall in my ET&WNC layout room.
