mloser

I found this one a while ago... If I hadn't talked to the property owner I would never have been sure it was the proper rail. See KW0599 for more info.

I walked in about 3 miles to find WHITE HORSE KW2987. The hike along the Appalachian Trail was rocky (as all of the AT in Penna seems to be) and a bit hilly, but it wasn't too bad a hike until I got to the last half mile, which was off-trail and across rocky and vegetation covered ground. Still not too bad, but the following week a friend and I walked back in and packed out the top half of the original stone monument for the station, set in the 1880s, which weighed 58 lbs. Now THAT was a hike!

There are two criteria for reporting a disk as destroyed-you have to find it in an unusable state and you have to find the disk in readable condition to prove what you found is the mark in question. What you report on this site is totally up to you--it is for us "hobbyists" and has no official status, although it has been reported that some surveyors check this site for pics of marks they are looking for. However, if you want to submit to the NGS then you must follow their criteria... From the NGS Mark Recovery Entry page: The final determination is up to Deb Brown, so you cannot accidentally report a mark as destroyed when it is not--she has done this for years and will either accept your evidence or deny it. I have had both happen to me and when she denies my evidence she has always told me why (for instance, I suggested a mark that was 30 degrees leaning was destroyed and she recommended that I submit that in a "FOUND POOR" report and let surveyors decide if they want to use it). I have found destroyed marks such as the one you found and they have always been declared destroyed by the NGS.

That is definitely destroyed. It is not in the location where it was set and can no longer be used.

Paul, The ones I have seen are all about 3 feet deep. That includes the smaller precast ones used for elevation (true "bench marks") and the cast-in-place ones for tri-stations. I have never seen a 1940s era monument out of the ground but the one 1966 monument I saw was huge. I don't think it would be something you remove without some thought, and a large tool. I have seen lots of these mowed over and around, so while that may be the reason it is gone, it would be a poor one. The mark is more likely buried. The description is so poor I don't know how you can find it easily other than to use your GPSr to take you to the approximate location of the station, then measure to each RM and see if you can locate one or more with a probe or metal detector, then measure back to the station area to see what is there. Matt

That isn't a stupid question at all. I have wondered it myself when there is a center turn lane or something else that makes the street non-proportional, but I have always used the center of the road surface, not the lanes. I have seen the edge of the road used at times but it is always vague as to whether they mean the edge of the ROAD or the BERM. I usually use it more a guide than the final word when I find it in the description. If I was to redescribe the mark I would use every item available, including the road centers if it wasn't too dangerous, the curblines, any trees, signs, etc. As we all know, the more reference points the better, since time removes or changes a lot of them. I try to get at least three but have been known to add more when they are available. Looking at the Google aerial photo (which I know is out of date) I would suggest the two curblines, the tree to the northwest and the tree to the west. If you want to go crazy, measure from that "thing" in the north center of the park (fountain?). It is likely to stay there a while but appears to be 300 feet or so away and thus is less useful. Just look for things you think are unlikely to change soon and use them. Remember, there is no such thing as too many references to help find a mark.

Papa-Bear...I am glad someone else heard the same message I did about intersection stations! I don't want to come down as the heavy in all this though, it was just how I interpreted Deb's request regarding intersection stations--they are no longer used and while she will be happy to remove destroyed ones from the database she doesn't need information about existing ones. You don't have to send evidence of the actual destruction, just the lack of a station. Unlike disks and other "set" marks, it is usually pretty obvious when a tower/smokestack/beacon goes missing. It is really very easy to get a truly destroyed intersection station listed as such--just take a pic of your GPSr in GOTO mode with the arrow visible and pointing to the non-existent station. Then take a farther pic showing that there is nothing there. Deb will mark it destroyed based on that evidence. See KV3608 for an example. Also, there are sometimes enough differences between old and new antennas that you can confirm that they are gone. Take KV3612 for instance. On the ASR database it appears to have been constructed in 2005 and it is at a slightly different location than the described antenna (most likely so the new one could be build beside the old one without interrupting service), but not far enough different for me to feel confident that it was new. However, it is a triangular structure as opposed to the square one described. That single piece of evidence led me to report it as destroyed. My report was accepted.

A few thoughts on various items in this thread: Deb is very busy and doesn't really have time to follow links to research destroyed stations. She also requires first person accounts from what I can gather, so she wants YOUR images of the destroyed station, not a link to a third party video, news article, etc. Deb might take our word for the destruction, as AZ mentioned. One time she actually did that for me when I forgot to send pics with my email. I rectified the error. She did remind me to send pics with future logs however so it isn't something I would want to make a habit of. From what I have seen the light bulbs on top of towers are covered with glass globes. I may be wrong and I am sure even if I am right there are instances where the bare bulb is used, but I always pictured something like this: with a cover over a bulb. That means that changing the bulb, under the globe, will have no effect on the position of the intersection point. Replacing that unit with a newer one might however, especially if it was placed in a different location so the old one could remain in use while the new one was installed. The final word is that Deb is no longer interested in getting recoveries for intersection stations except when they are destroyed.

GE tends to be a hog on its own, and I will agree that the topo maps take a while to load, but it only took about 10 seconds to load a good section of topo when I just tested it. The bench marks take only a couple seconds to load. Overall I like how it works. I am not sure which viewer I prefer right now. Both have a lot going for them, but both also have some flaws (not all the programmer's doing!) My biggest issue with Scaredycat viewer is that the window is not resizable and it sits just low enough on the page that I have to shift it up to get it all in my screen. What I like about Scaredycat viewer is that it uses Google Maps, which are quicker, and that it has terrain data, which looks cool. The Foxtrot viewer uses GE, which means easy navigation as well as the other features of GE that are cool. It is hard to choose!

Good catch Patty. I was wondering where the benchmarks were but never thought to look at the version. From foxtrot's screen shots the three things he provide can be checked or unchecked--the status, the topo maps, and the NGS Benchmarks. Matt edit--on a whim I copied the link and changed the version--you can get 1.5 here.

In a nutshell, get what you want to pay for. I have a $35 cheapie and a $200 good one. I keep the cheapie in the back seat of my car and grab it every time I step out to look for a mark. It has stood the test of time despite being treated somewhat shabbily. I have used the "good" on about 5 times and it has never located a mark the cheap one hasn't been able to. The typical range of a metal detector (I have read) is the width of the head, so mine works to about 4-6 inches in depth. I have found this to be fairly accurate. I never fiddle with the discrimination--just let it set at the lowest setting, so while it finds bronze disks well it also does a great job of locating old aluminum cans. I consider that a small price to pay for the bench marks it has located though. Matt

With the exception of the fact that there is no disk surrounding the stem, this mark is more usable than most semi-destroyed marks-the cross mark in the top remains so if a surveyor was confident that the mark was the one described (since there is no stamping to be seen of course), the elevation is totally valid. I would submit the recovery as Found, Poor without hesitation and explain that the center of the top of the actual disk remains with the cross mark.

My guess is that WK stands for Willakenzie, which is the section of the city it is located in, and the number is simply a sequential identifier. Other marks start with SC (Santa Clara), SW (South West Eugene) and SE (South East Eugene). All of these areas are selectable by name in the search criteria. In my area Lancaster County has numerous marks set in 1993 to help with an aerial photography project. There are approximately 200 marks, set in sets of twos (the county engineer wasn't around at the start of teh project so he really wasn't sure why there were two at each location). I offered to help recover them and he accepted, since it was something he usually assigned to summer interns, who may not have put the best effort into this sort of work. He was happy to have someone interested in doing the recoveries help out. They have a database of PDF files viewable by clicking on a map, but he sent me all the PDFs so I didn't have to select every one in the county individually. The state of PA (commonwealth actually), also has an online database of their marks. The vast majority are NGS marks, but are not dynamically linked so the information on them is mostly out of date, especially in the areas I have been hunting. I offered to help them and got some initial interest but never heard back from them. Their loss.

I am rarely "embarrassingly fulsome", but sometimes "disgustingly loathsome". Is that almost the same?

qyv, Don't let it bug you--the distance from a local station is no more accurate than your GPSr, even in the worst of conditions. It was used mainly to get TO the mark, and we have better ways of doing that now. The only time it is an issue is when the mark is a measurable distance from a long gone station - "AT CRESWELL, LANCASTER COUNTY, ABOUT 100 FT. S OF THE PENNSYLVANIA RR STATION, AND IN THE E COPING OF AN ARCH CULVERT. A COPPER BOLT". I have no idea where the station was in this case. There is nothing left of it and no easy way of telling exactly where the building used to sit. The old topo map I have found doesn't show a station and I am sure it hasn't existed since the 1930s or before. Also, don't put too much faith in those 1995 Power Squadron recoveries. In fact, don't put faith in anyone's previous recoveries! Just go out there and look. Remember to go by the description and NOT by the coordinates. They are not accurate in these vertical marks. You will get to the area described but usually not exactly there (these aren't caches). Also, use the tools at your disposal, including topo maps (the topozone link from the Geocaching page is extremely helpful), aerial photos from Google Maps, Live Maps, and any others (you will find some have high resolution pics where others don't), local residents, and even your own knowledge of the area. Sometimes it is easy to stand there and say "nope, that mark can't be there any longer, for instance, some of the marks in your area used to be on bridges and it is obvious from Google Maps that the bridges were removed and grade crossings substituted. You can be certain that the mark is gone! Other times the area has changed just enough to be perplexing but sometimes you can piece it back together and find the missing mark, perhaps under an inch or two of dirt--a metal detector is indispensable here. And other times you will keep coming back to check time and time, not convinced that the mark is gone. I have been to a couple of marks like this. One I returned to four times until I found it. That is either perseverance or OCD. I am not sure which.

Plus previous conversations in this forum seem to indicate that actual disks weren't set until about 1900. The earliest I have actually seen have dated from 1900-1905 and NGS Surveyor has said that disks weren't set until around 1900.

Both are listed as set by CGS, one in 1941 and one in 1942. The 1942 disk was a reset of a 1941 disk that had been placed about 2/10 of a mile away. A couple of things come to mind. Maybe the control data wasn't available for the 1941 disk yet, or maybe they just didn't like the setting of the 1941 disk. In looking more closely at the pictures I would guess that the line of sight from KW0872 to KW0876 on the opposite end of the bridge is poor since the signal equipment is in the way. It may have been easier to just set a new disk closer to the tracks than to try to set up to see over the signal box.

The Rockville Bridge north of Harrisburg, PA has five marks set on it- KW0871, KW0872, KW0873, KW0875, and KW0876. I found three without much difficulty, found one WITH difficulty, and didn't find the fifth, but I think it may still be there--it is just too scary to try to find it as the railroad is very busy and the mark is in a dangerous spot, both physically and police-ally! And that is from a man who walked 1/2 mile up a railroad where trains regularly run 100 mph, so take me seriously. Four of the marks are on the east end of the bridge and the fifth is on the west end (that is the one I found with difficulty, as it entailed a scramble up a ballast covered bank that sloped dangerously towards the abutment, so the higher you got up the abutment, the higher your chances of slipping right off the abutment to the ground below. I only got about 20 feet from it before I chickened out, took a grab shot and scooted). Three of the marks are within 20 feet of each other and are visible at the same time. Actually visible--see the pics in the recoveries! Two are disks, which confuses me--I have often seen disks set near rivets but never so close to another disk. Was it an oversight or because someone didn't trust the previous survey? Edit to change the URLs in the links to match the PID.

Looking at the pic of the mark I am pretty sure it is one of the precast marks that were popular in the 1930s and 1940s. I thought they had stopped using them by the time that one was set though. These posts are very thin and easy to break. Chances are the broken post was put back in the hole it used to be in, or even into a new hole. No matter--it is unusable. I have found a number of these marks broken, and one was even set back on top of the bottom piece from where it had snapped and looked fine. It was only because I tried to clean the disk and the post wobbled that I discovered it was broken. As for underground mark, I would bet a lot against it. Like others mentioned, just being a traverse station (and therefore having adjusted horizontal coordinates) doesn't automatically mean it would have an underground mark. I am pretty certain the description would mention an underground mark if one existed (but of course that is no guarantee that it happened).

Papa-Bear's advice is sound. I would love to say I always look at topo maps before I go hunting but that would be a lie. However, when I return from looking for a mark that I haven't found, but by all indications should have been there (for instance, the bridge doesn't look like it changed but no mark was evident), I will often take a look at the topo to see if I was in the right place, or even on the right bridge! I too have found that the X indicating the bench mark is usually right on, at least within the constraints of map scale and printing. Holograph, you are right about headwalls. They are usually part of arched bridges, and when they are mentioned in bench mark descriptions there is either no capstone or the capstone seems to be considered part of the headwall. I think I have seen headwalls on non-arched bridges though. Frex3wv, I have been a railfan all my life and can't recall hearing the term "low rail". If it was on a curve and the tracks were banked then one rail would be lower than the other, but that isn't very likely in this situation, first because the bridge isn't on a curve and second because banked curves are usually only seen on higher speed rail lines (there are some great banked curves on Amtrak at Gap, PA, east of Lancaster, where the difference between the inside and outside rails is quite a few inches). I wouldn't put too much stock in the term though. It could be a mistype or some odd interpretation of what the surveyor saw. Holograph, the topo map just shows the railroad going over a creek.

One term I would add to the excellent illustration at the top is "headwall" which is the outside edge of the deck--basically the edge of the bridge running from abutment to abutment. It is often mentioned on railroad benchmark descriptions.

Are you looking for HX1952? If so, the Topozone map of the mark shows it as being on the southeast corner of the bridge (pretty much where I would expect it from the description. I am not sure about the description of the south wall or of the use of the term low rail. I would expect it to be pretty much where every abutment mounted disk was though, and I suspect that is where you already looked. I don't think it is vertically mounted as the description would most likely mention that, and a disk mounted vertically at that height would be unusable.

Foxtrot, I have yet to find a mark that referenced railroad direction instead of actual compass direction when describing a mark set beside the tracks. However, describing marks seems to be a personal thing and different surveyors may have done it different ways. I don't think I would find railroad direction to be very useful. I am big railfan and I would be hard pressed to tell you railroad direction on most of the lines in my area! Another thing I have noticed about directions is that when they say "North of" some linear feature (road or tracks) they almost always mean perpendicular to the feature in a northerly direction as opposed to precisely north of the feature.

I also found a small milk bottle while looking for a benchmark but not as cool as those three! And like a few others here I recall milk deliveries in bottles in the 1960s in Harrisburg, PA. Milk was homogenized by then so the cream did not rise to the top, but in winter it WOULD freeze and pop the top off. Lately, as I attempt to eat more whole foods, I have been drinking raw whole milk and have had the pleasure of seeing, and taking a sip of, the cream on the top of the bottle once I open it (sometimes I just can't resist).

I created my own icons starting with this set a long time ago to help me keep track of my finds, etc. I have icons for Not Searched For (just a disk image), Found (a disk with a green check), Not found (a disk with a red X), and Destroyed (a disk with a red line through it), and even one for Previously Destroyed (a disk with a question mark), which are marks that are marked Destroyed in the NGS database but that I wanted to search for at one point. I am at work now but will provide those icons and instructions on how to load them. I know they load in my Mapsource program as well as the GPSr. I update my searched-for benchmarks on Mapsource with the appropriate icon, then put it in a matching category. That way I can show or hide any category of mark quickly. Look for more tonight.