This is the higher carbon steel Category 3 This is where it states that there are 3 general categories of track spike. It’s a current standard that controls the requirements for railroad spikes, and it was last reviewed back in 2013. That’s the standard that I’m drawing my information from. So the metal needs to be soft enough to bend without shattering. So it’s not practical for it to be too hard.īut a rail spike that’s bent can still do its job. If you whack it with a hammer, it’ll crack.Ī shattered rail spike holds no track (ancient Chinese proverb? If it’s not it should be). ![]() When a steel has a high carbon content and is heat treated so that it’s hard, it becomes more brittle. It needs to be strong and tough to do its job. It’s not subjected to wear like the track is. Required PropertiesĪ railroad spike holds the track in place. Overall, specialty items seemed to be the auction trend of the week, with “ The One” at Sotheby’s - featuring an iconic gown worn by Princess Diana - taking place on the same day and also placing a premium on one-of-a-kind objects through history.Ok, to understand what the material is like, we should preface this with what it’s intended to do. With its homosexual overtones, a 1969 film screening in Atlanta triggered a raid known as the “ Stonewall of the South,” which included the harassment of a movie-going audience of roughly 70 patrons, as well as the arrest of the theater’s owners. There were fewer bidders looking for a more satirical take on Westward expansion, as the original 35 mm reels of Andy Warhol’s 1968 film, Lonesome Cowboys, fetched merely their expected price of $25,200. Maybe we’re all just nostalgic for a time when the government supported functional infrastructure-building? This purported sense of unity is a bit of whitewashing on an undertaking that, in addition to supporting the Manifest Destiny-fueled colonization of North America, also cost many thousands of ( mostly Chinese) immigrant workers their lives, but the power of the spike as a symbol of American progress clearly resonated with contemporary bidders. That sense of unity means as much today as it did when the transcontinental railroad was finished less than four years after the Civil War.” A steel railroad spike clad in gold and silver used in the ceremony marking the completion of the transcontinental railroad, May 10, 1869 “I think the spike captured the imagination of collectors, in part, because it is a potent symbol of national unity. “In the end, the value soared past our expectations,” Klarnet added. ![]() To the unknowing spectator, the approximately five-inch-long piece may look like a slightly overblown souvenir from the state train museum, but Peter Klarnet, Christie’s senior specialist of Americana, said he and his team “knew it would be the subject of intense competition among collectors.” The event, which involved four commemorative spikes in total, was one of the first events in history to be live-broadcast to an entire nation. “Hewes opted to commission instead a golden spike as his offering to commemorate the meeting of the two railroads,” Christie’s catalogue essay explains. Hewes had benefited greatly from the railroad development, capitalizing on steam shovels to fill in wetlands surrounding San Francisco, and was seeking a celebratory gesture to combat what he saw as a lack of “proper sentiment being expressed by the people of the Pacific Coast, and especially by the great mining industries of the territories through which this railroad passed.” First envisioned as a notion of “silver rails” at the connecting railway lines, the idea morphed into a golden spike. ![]() Safford, it took its cue from the first spike commissioned for the event, by David Hewes, the brother-in-law of Jane Stanford, the wife of Central Pacific Railroad Director Leland Stanford. Commissioned and presented by Arizona Territorial Governor Anson P.K. The object was one of four ceremonial spikes used to mark the “meeting of the rails” at Promontory Point, Utah, in May 1869.
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