mloser

I didn't even think to look for "M" as I just assumed the bridge was new and the mark was lost. In fact, I STILL think the original mark was lost as it was described as a chiseled square "... marked with the letters "B M" with rectangular figure between". No mention is made of a bolt. I would expect it to be very similar to "N" which you found early this year. I agree that there is no way to access that mark. CSX is very busy in that area and there would be no safe way to get to the middle of the bridge, much less to get down to see the mark.

Dave beat me to it! I suspected what he said after having searched for USGS marks from their datasheets. The older marks were usually set based on a point of origin. For instance, there is a string of marks around here based on an original set in Harrisburg, PA. All are stamped "HGB". I believe this may have been a mistake in stamping that was carried throughout the line, since it really isn't possible to abbreviate Harrisburg as HGB. It would more likely be HBG (which is a common abbreviation for it now). Google Books has quite a few USGS books so I did a search for "725 GRAFTON" and quickly found some references to the mark (oddly, one of them was a California book with some WV stuff tacked on the end), including the USGS Bulletin for 1909 "The Results of Spirit Leveling in West Virginia 1896 to 1906 Inclusive, probably an earlier version of Dave's book. The section for the Arnoldsburg Quad where "725 GRAFTON" is located (pp 37-38), has the following text: . Note that the Grantsville quad was called Arnoldsville at that time. I also discovered that the point of origin was (as Dave described) "M", on the center pillar of the railroad bridge in Grafton. That bridge was most likely replaced and the current GRAFTON B.R.D.G. mark was set on the new bridge in 1941. I discovered that from a book called "West Virginia Geological Survey, Volume One A, Petroleum and Natural Gas Precise Levels" which I found on Google Books when I searched for "715 Grafton". The book lists the permanent marks along the railroad, including "M", "N" and "O". Other marks in WV are based on one in PITTSBURG (not "GH"--they removed the H near the turn of the 20th century, then put it back on later). By the way, I have found the Google books very useful. The NGS library is useful but much harder to find. Dave, is there a finding aid?

John, All the disks I have found with "DISK DRILLED IN HORIZONTAL" in the description have had the DISK horizontal (like 98 percent of them are).

Reminder to self: Stay on Bill93's good side!

I do agree with the theory that the abutments have been built up, but I'm not totally positive that it is an issue in this case. I can see the evidence that the bridge has been raised but the question is "when was it raised". It was certainly a long time ago, since the railing stantions are PRR style, and the PRR ceased to exist in 1968 when Penn Central came into being. That gives a good 2 year overlap from the time of the 1966 recovery until the PC began, but I am certain that for at least a while the PC would have used old PRR castings, and may even have removed, saved and reused the railings from the old abutments. If you are certain you have the right corner then I would suspect that the bridge was modified after 1966 and the mark is under the new concrete. I would check all the corners. Two things that Z15 pointed out are very important. The first is to measure from the rail (6.9 feet north of the north rail). Although the distance may not be exact because the tracks have certainly been relaid and possibly raised, it should be close enough to let you know if the mark is on the wingwall or under the ballast. Second, and most important, is the wisdom of trespassing on the railroad right of way, a concern from the vantage points of safety and trespassing. The bridge belongs to Norfolk Southern and that set of tracks are among the busiest in the country, as you probably know from living in that area. I am not sure of the exact number of trains passing that way every day but suspect it tops 50. A bridge is not a good place to be when a train comes by! All major railroads have their own police forces, and they are recognized as valid law enforcement agencies, able to fine and arrest trespassers. Typically the officers deal with vandalism, theft and trespassing, and are understandably a bit tough minded when they catch someone on their property. Norfolk Southern has a reputation of having some of the least tolerant of railroad police forces.

I have only found that one vertical rail, and I don't think I looked for more than one or two others. I think you meant HX2593 didn't you? I don't have any idea what it is!

Here's one I was pretty surprised to find, since the tracks have been gone for years.

Top of rail means just that--the elevation of the top of the railroad rail at the Turner railroad station. Like most of these UEs it is subject to change since the railroad may have done work on the track at that location (just cleaning ballast might result in a slight elevation change, as would replacing ties or rails). That is why I don't bother looking for the UE marks. Too bad that winter has arrived. We got a bit of snow up here in PA but it isn't enough to keep me home this weekend. It just makes the search a bit harder.

I third what BDT said. Using Google Maps and Virtual Earth it appears that the station would be at a large shrub in the back yard of the house. That means it may be buried or destroyed. I think he is correct about the reference marks too. You are pretty much on your own in finding them, but I would imagine they are similar distances as listed for RM 3. Mass Highway Department lists the disk in both horizontal and vertical areas but has no information on it. A very interesting note is this: REFERENCE MARK 2, DANGEROUS TO OCCUPY, IS THE OLD STATION BOSTON ROCK. Chances are that BOSTON ROCK dates from the lat 1800s and is somewhere near the edge of a dropoff. A quick look at Virtual Earth showed a couple of decent small cliffs. Finding RM 2 would be cool!

I agree with Bill93 for the most part. It has no use as a vertical control point, but may serve some value in helping to find the horizontal station, at least until someone snags it or the farmer gets tired of it and rolls it into the weeds. I would submit the PID to Deb and see if she agrees if it is destroyed, and make a note in the recovery for the main station about the status of the reference mark. That way if it is declared destroyed and the reference mark is removed from the database (of available marks... it remains in the database with a destroyed status).

In my experience this simply doesn't happen with any regularity. I would guess that 95% of all destroyed survey marks are never approved for destruction, based on the not found rate I have of about 1/3. We discussed the legality issue a few years ago and I seem to recall that we concluded that nobody was ever prosecuted for destroying a survey mark. That may have been conjecture or fact. I am no longer sure. The point is that it would be difficult to prosecute the removal of a survey mark for legitimate purposes, since they typically reside on private property and the property rights supersede the right of the government agency whose stamping is on the disk. I would think that there would be a possibility of prosecution and fine for defacing a disk, but I don't recall any evidence that it ever happened. I am willing to be that the removal/destruction of most survey marks is accidental, done by a crew that didn't know it existed, and once they discovered it in the bucket of their backhoe, may well have decided to bury it in the bottom of the outgoing dump truck instead of researching the proper way to deal with it. Thus it goes to the landfill with nobody being the wiser, as the saying goes, out of sight out of mind. Thus nobody ever actually reports the mark as destroyed, and they live on as Not Founds forever. They do if someone knows of it (actually, the PID is marked as destroyed and does not appear in standard queries, but can still be accessed. There are instances of marks listed as destroyed still being in existence and being found and "resurrected". I don't have any of these to my credit but at least one GC.com member posted about just such an occurrence). The only way to get a mark destroyed is to see the actual disk/chisel mark/etc. in destroyed condition (e.g. the monument out of the ground). In one instance I was able to get a mark declared destroyed even though I never saw it after it was destroyed, but I was very familiar with the location of the mark and had talked to the foreman of the crew and he confirmed that the disk had been removed and was going to be reported as destroyed (after it wasn't I decided to send the email myself). I am sure DaveD will eventually check in and give us the NGS side of the story, but this is how it appears to us ground troops out hunting.

Ok, all this talk about BDT's map posting has me confused, because Line 12 is at the left edge of the map, and I am almost positive it shows the intersection of Rt 43 and Creek Rd. I think the map to the left is the Charleston quad and Line 12 is mostly on that quad. Frex3vw, I think the key to finding this mark is to find out where the old pump station was and find the road to it. Then hopefully you can find the intersection to that road and the location of the railroad crossing, whether it exists or not. Below is the topo map of the area around Z 9 with some marks to indicate a bit of guesswork on my part. At the bottom left is a purple circle, which is the intersection of Connor Drive and another road (in fact, it is the only intersection on Connor Drive). The NYC crossed this road just below the circle. This is well over half a mile from Z 9 though. With so few options regarding Conner Drive, I branched out, thinking there may have been an error in data entry. Across the creek is a green circle at the crossing of a road and railroad. If memory serves me right it is about .3 miles from Z 9, so it is not a likely candidate. To the north is a red circle and is my best bet for the bolt. I don't have a lot to back this up, except that it measures to about .25 mile from Z 9. It has a railroad crossing and a road leading to the northeast. And that road leads to a circle on the top of a hill with two dashed lines leading to it from the river. Could it have been a pumping station, maybe with a water tower at one time? I know I am stretching on this one, but the evidence that I can dig up doesn't match the distances--I don't think there is a place along Conner Drive across the river that the mark could have been. Conner Drive shows up on both the new and old topos and was always a short road that had only one intersection. I also agree with your earlier post that distances are measured by travel, and not traverse. There would be no reason to continue a line across a river. They simply would have started another line. I am pretty sure that the majority of Line 12 is on the Charleston quad. Follow the arrows on the line and see which direction they head from Z 7. That should help decide if you should head north or west from Z 7. I guess the bad news in all of this is that there is a near zero chance of finding the bolt. By the description it was in the middle of the road and unless there has been no activity in that area for decades, it will have been removed or paved over.

Wintertime, The Mapdekode program produces .img files, which appear to be static background images and not raster files. My suspicion is that they take up a lot less room than either DRG files or the maps that MapSource uses. But I have never taken the time to create any, so I can't be sure.

I'm betting it is the second one south of the signal shack! I originally thought it was the 3rd south of the shack, and the first one south of the tennis courts, but based on some measuring I did on the Virtual Earth site I changed my mind.

That white square thing is most likely a signal control building--you can see the disturbed ballast from it to what is most likely a signal post just to the north northeast. Chances are it was recently put in since it is on some of the pics and not others. Just to the northeast of that white building is a driveway from the road to nowhere. I suspect that was a driveway to the now demolished stone building. Pgrig pointed out the he found the remnants of the foundation of that building. I'd like to think I saw part of one of the walls of it in the aerial photo but I wouldn't bet much on it. Based on the similar nearby mark (5 M) set at the same time I think there were 2 tracks there when the marks were set. 5 M appears to be the specified distance from the tracks, and it is on the same side of the tracks as this mark, so the evidence is that there were always two tracks here, and that the number of tracks just wasn't mentioned.

I agree that you have picked a tough one, but it isn't impossible. Obviously everyone here has their approach to finding a mark like this, and there are some great hunters giving advice. Here is how I would approach it: First, looking at Topozone shows me that it isn't too far from the indicated coords, but that it is indeed on the west side of the tracks as suspected. The triangle symbol also tells me that it was at one time a mark used for horizontal control, although it doesn't seem to have been logged anywhere that way, including the Mass Highway Department, which has a mark labeled "5 S" (query for it here) but no description save that it is 2 inches underground, and also promises a sketch but the link is bad. But the presence of a horizontal symbol leads me to believe that the location of the mark on the map is pretty accurate, and that means it isn't too close to the tracks. Next bit of research is to find similar marks. I looked at GC.com and found 5 M, which Shorelander previously found and photographed. This is both good news and bad. The good news is that the mark is pretty far from the tracks, and that gives reason to think that your mark may also be a similar distance. Also, the description for 5 M puts it near a pole and confirms what I have found in my area--that these marks are usually set in line with the telephone/telegraph poles. The bad news is that the poles are gone at 5 M, so yours may also be, but BDT said he saw the poles in the aerial view (and in fact, returning to his link I see them also. I have marked the photo to show the pole but the image is a bit small to see it easily: Look at BDT's link for a better view). So maybe there isn't any bad news! Armed with that info, I would simply go the pole in question. It is the one across the tracks and just to the north of the coordinates from the GPSr. I would then measure 3 feet south of the pole (in line with the next pole) and metal detect for the disk (without a metal detector you need to probe or simply dig. I have found that when probing you will hit something hard that has a solid ring to it. By probing from the sides you can confirm that what you are poking at extends deep into the ground, and then dig). If that failed I would measure the 98 feet from the road to see if I was in the right place and again metal detect. If all else failed I would pace off the distance to the old foundation and the milepost to see if I had the right pole. If that still didn't work I would use my 100 ft tape to actually MEASURE those distances as best I could and again search. However, doing that is not a simple task alone with a 100 foot tape, and would also be pretty inaccurate, so I would be more likely to dig a lot of holes before I did it. By the way, this mark is pretty poorly described, and also poorly placed. The reference points are all pretty distant and hard to measure from. A better placement would have put the mark much closer to the milepost or to some other object that was 25 or less feet from the mark. 5 M at least was a measurable distance from a trackside box, even though it is now gone! Good luck with it!

The building looks original to me, although the brick may have been cleaned (water blasted is more likely than sand blasted in my opinion). I have seen marks set in joints between stones, as it may be easier to chisel into mortar than into rock. The weathering stain under the disk makes it seem old also. Here is a picture of the station from the mid-1950s: (from www.monon.monon.org). I can't tell if there is a disk below the ticket windows in this pic, but it does show that the level of the sidewalk was not significantly changed, and that the building looks to be original. In the end I would guess that the statement that the disk was a foot above the walk is incorrect or incorrectly entered.

I used to work for a concert venue that had a bunch of those wands. I brought in a benchmark and "detected" but it only seemed to work closer than 4 inches. Do you have better results Maconart/ I love my cheapie MD and it is always in the car. It breaks down to about 2 feet long so I can put in my backpack with the loop sticking out for hands free hiking.

I agree with AZCachmeister. I own both a cheap Harbor Freight detector and a $200 Radio Shack detector, but I rely on the Harbor Freight detector almost exclusively. Unlike AZ, I use it frequently, preferring it to simply probing. I have even carried it to the top of mountains to help me search. It will find a disk at about 6 inches depth.

Kewaneh, I have seen more than one chiseled square that was inset in a concrete (or stone) abutment, but I admit they are rare and my first thought was that this one would be at the edge. The description says different though, so I would at least consider it being a full square in the concrete. But, I would never think that it HAD to be inset, and if I was looking for it I would comb the entire end of the headwall for it, most likely without even seriously reading the description unless I turned up empty handed. Northwes, I agree about CSI image inhancement--it is laughable the way they take a fuzzy photo and "enhance" it and magically turn up a clear image of a license plate, etc. But maybe that is only available to the government? (I also love how they never turn on the lights at a crime site, preferring instead to muck around in the dark with just their pen sized Mag-Lite. How they find anything that way is beyond me). My photo editor of choice is Irfanview, a very basic graphic editing program, available free to anyone willing to go to www.irfanview.com. I have used it for years to do basic image tasks. I have found the image changing portion of it can help make some parts of images more viewable. I first used it when I created my company's first web site years and years ago and have rarely had need for anything more powerful since then (I no longer do web image work). The animated GIF was done with an online tool (at Glickr.com, I think). All I did was make two different images, one with the yellow box and one without. The tool combined them and put a 1 second delay in between. Are you a full-service sign shop? I was IT manager for a company that had its own sign shop and I loved to play with the stuff they had there. I even got half decent at cutting and weeding! They had 2 Gerber Edge printers and two cutters, also Gerbers and the sign guys would let me use them whenever I wanted. I primarily made things for my daughter's various soccer teams. To be honest that is the only thing I miss about working there! Can I stop by your shop and play?

In 1943 they were 6 inches different. My finely detailed drawing was just a map of how I would approach hunting for the mark if I had to measure. In actual practice I would just look at the headwall for a chiseled square. I retract my earlier statement about it being at the edge of the headwall--If Y 80 is 3.5 feet from the edge and the square is 3 feet from Y80, then the square is 6 inches in from the edge of the wall. Using technology previous available only to CSI investigators I have an enhanced image of the mark. It is exactly centered in the orange box: Actually, what I did was play with Irfanview's image enhancement capabilities, which are pretty limited, but when I reversed the image I thought I saw the chiseled square. Of course that may have been just my DESIRE to see it, but here is an animated GIF showing what I believe to be the chiseled square. Once you look at the bottom pic, return to the first one and see if you can see what I saw. The only glitch is that the square is parallel to the deep saw line, which is pretty noticeably NOT parallel to the sides of the headwall!

The square is 3 feet from the disk and 6 inches farther from the track. The 1940s description says it is on the EAST END of the SOUTH WALL, so I would guess it is along the side and not the corner, but I wouldn't rule out the corner. Here is how I would approach it:

Dave, My pic of RIDGEVIEW is the tri-station mark and the monument isn't very deep (but it sure was wide!). I had also attempted to place this pic: of a bench mark, (KW1093) but I put in the link and not the actual image. It is the same sort of precast monument as CallowayMT's image except mine showed a broken monument.

I have seen quite a few marks out of their natural element. KW1231 RIDGEVIEW was the first tri-station I found in destroyed condition. I was also amazed at how much concrete was in the monument. I borrowed an 8 lb sledge to hammer the disk out of this one (and RM1, which was in the same condition). It took about 10 big hits to basically knock the top off the monument. Last weekend I found the two RMs for 1979 tri-station VETERAN 2 in destroyed condition. Times have changed since 1966 when RIDGEVIEW was placed and now modern methods were used--a 5 gallon bucket was used as a form for the top of the mark. This is RM3 lying in the woods. The top part of RM4 was nearby (it was just the bucket shaped portion). Finally, there was a time period when vertical marks were precast concrete--from the 30s into the 40s it seems. These were about 4 feet long and set into the ground. Here is the top 2 feet or so of KW1093 http://img.geocaching.com/benchmark/lg/251...167cdc58522.jpg These marks were usually set at ground level, and for good reason. They are simply concrete with no reinforcement, so they simply snap when bumped hard, just like this one. And then there is my favorite--WHITE HORSE. The 1882 stone monument had been removed in 1933 and left beside the new monument. I got so flustered when I found the stone that I didn't take a picture of it where it sat, but here is the top. (I broke it in half in preparation for removing it. It sits in my cubicle now and will be at the NGS office when I get a chance). I had enough sense to take a picture of the bottom chunk. edited once to add WHITE HORSE and again to correct a link

From that which delivers all knowledge of the known universe, Wikipedia: "Pittsburgh is one of the few American cities to be spelled with an h at the end of a burg suffix. For this reason, it is also the most commonly misspelled city in America. While briefly referred to as "Pittsburg" during the late 19th century, in 1911 the Pittsburgh spelling was officially restored."