Hi, CWRail here, I am at the east end of the yard at Siding 8 on the Vail woods railroad near the location of the old construction camp and Camp 4-3 which later moved to the 44 woods rail line. I started my railroad career in 1959 when I was seven years old picking up tie plates and spikes left over from when the Vail woods line was pulled up in the 1940’s. My dad and older brothers and myself would head up into the woods on weekends with our old Studebaker truck from our house at the Vail camp and look for scrap along the old railroad lines with the appropriate permissions and permits. When there was a large pile of discarded rusty tie plates, angle bars, short bits of rail and spikes, the scrap dealer would come pick up the pile with a magnet and load the material into a truck. I remember walking down the old railroad grade toward the twin bridges above the Skookumchuck River around this time and I remember the rails had been pulled from the bridges, but the tie plates were still in place. These bridges are long gone, but I bet the tie plates are somewhere at the bottom on a very steep ravine. This is CWRail Over and out.
