Old train station finds

gforce1972

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York, PA
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Whites DFX
Hunted an old 1800s rural train station this afternoon. It is being torn down this weekend Not alot of land that was clear. Lots of weeds. Any help on the medal?

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Very Nice !! The 38 shell looks like an old one,I love the medal,not sure what it belongs to ,but someone will. Hopefully you get the chance to go back, Congrats & Good luck !!! P.S. Is there anything on the back of the medal ??
 

No help on the watch FOB, but I dug one exactly like it last year at an old farm, great find!
 

Nothing on back of medal. The item on the left is a women's compact with a bullet hole through it.
 

Nice fob, I found a repro of it on Amazon, but nothing about it other than that. It's an Army General Service Eagle, and I'd guess 1940's or 50's?
 

Very cool finds, i really hope you get to go back and hunt some more. I couldnt tell you about the metal but all your finds are really neat, good luck and happy hunting!!!
 

Cool stuff, love the medal!
 

Not a clue on ya metal....But all of them are cool.....HH
 

As a few posted here earlier and enlightened me, it isn't a medal, but a watch FOB from an old pocket watch.
 

nice finds ! Keep digging near the RR station loading area , it may be possible you get a RR metal baggage tag or two . These tags are always an exciting prize :exclamation: also some locations near the tracks could be prime place to find run over by the train , squashed coins .. found a few dozen IH pennies that the kids left on the tracks 80-120 years ago
 

nice finds ! Keep digging near the RR station loading area , it may be possible you get a RR metal baggage tag or two . These tags are always an exciting prize :exclamation: also some locations near the tracks could be prime place to find run over by the train , squashed coins .. found a few dozen IH pennies that the kids left on the tracks 80-120 years ago

If you're going to look for these, look farther off the tracks. Sometimes the pennies would stay near the tracks, and sometimes they'd get squirted off in the brush and lost. I recall about 30% losses. It wasn't considered terrorism in those days. :laughing7:
 

:laughing9: your right , Bum Luck .. 30 % flew , they are paper thin and oblong so they didn't get too far and most will be easy pickin' because they don't get buried deep by time .. forgot to mention the hot rocks around these old railroad places . Have Fun G
 

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The .38 cartridge looks like it has the old 200 gr. roundnose bullet. These were carried by some of the officers I worked with, with the idea that they would penetrate a car door in a shoot out. The idea was that bigger was better in the era of the 1950s and early 60s. Later on our PD went to the .357 Magnum and discovered that light weight jacketed bullets at high velocity penetrated just as well as the 200 gr. lead bullet with enough remaining energy to do damage on the other side. Winchester made a 158 gr. jacketed penetrator type full metal bullet that was advertised as an armour piercing bullet. It did pretty fair but wasn't all that great as I remember. Monty
 

:laughing9: your right , Bum Luck .. 30 % flew , they are paper thin and oblong so they didn't get too far and most will be easy pickin' because they don't get buried deep by time .. forgot to mention the hot rocks around these old railroad places . Have Fun G

Worse is the railroad junk, commonly discarded by the crews such as bent spikes, plates (my favorite), broken bolts, etc. Be very careful around tracks; most times they are off limits for obvious safety reasons, and even the bed slopes can be unstable footing.

HH!
 

This line was abandoned and rails removed 15 years ago or more. Here are some photos. Site is in PA.

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My wife worked for a short line railway for over 20 years and retired in 1996. I have seen detectorists working along the tracks of this railway and then pack up and go home in frustration. What they don't realize is that the line mainly hauled scrap metal to the steel mill. Nearly every trip resulted in pieces of scrap metal falling off of the gondola cars as the moved along the tracks. There is enough scrap metal of various sorts along those tracks to drive you nuts if you are metal detecting. I am no smarter than the rest having tried to hunt along the tracks several years ago when it dawned on me what the problem was! Monty
 

Did you find these at Ore Valley, in York Township ?
 

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