Doug Miller wrote:
In article , aemeijers wrote:

(Saw the strangest thing at an estate sale last year. Small house, and
the beam running down the center of the basement looked funny. After a
few minutes, the penny dropped, and I realized it was an upside down
hunk of used railroad track holding the house up.)

Yep, I've seen that before. My parents have a vacation cottage in a small town
in northern Michigan, where the support beams in the basement are reclaimed
trolley track.

That actually is a plausible scenario for the house I saw- it dates from
around when the interurban rail that used to go across south MI went
belly up, and it isn't too far from an abandoned right-of-way. Midnight
requisition, or maybe the guy who built the place worked on the line, or
the dismantling of it. Or if not that, CN (ex- GT) has a major switching
and repair yard here, and it used to be even bigger, so there were lots
of guys around with access to the materials and the skills to work it.

--
aem sends...