David Billington wrote:

May depend on the quality of maintenance the rails had. When my dad
worked at Boeing in Wichita a work colleague had a rail spike on his
desk and when asked where it came from was told from a local active main
line and he had just pulled it out by hand. I can remember thinking some
of the sleepers looked in a poor state in the area but didn't think
spikes would actually be loose.


I saw a lot of them that loose as a kid. We would use a railroad
bridge to cross a creek, and a lot of them could be pulled by hand. The
scary part was it was a private line that was used by a steel mill 10
miles away to haul slag. The bridge had a platform half way across, so
people could get off the track if a train came around the bend while
they were near the middle.


--
Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.