New Zealand "date nails". from Paul Whitcombe

[P Whitcombe]

Attn. New Zealand Rail Buffs.
Can any one help me please!!!!!

Can any one tell me where i can obtain some NZ "date nails" please.
many thanks

Paul Whitcombe.
email: pwit...@ihug.co.nz

[Andrew]

On Sat, 04 Jul 1998 13:25:05 +1200, P Whitcombe <pwit...@ihug.co.nz>
wrote:

I work for the railways and went and saw a friend of mine at the rail
weld depot and he said he nothing of the date stamps
sorry I couldnt help further

Andrew

[Bill]

If date nails were ever used in New Zealand, it was a very long time ago.
The 1957 Handbook for Permanent Way Staff makes no mention of them. It
does, however, refer to brands on the sleepers. These brands were stamped
into the sleepers.

For Australian hardwoods, the brand gave the state of origin and the type
of timber. There were some 18 species used as I recall. I don't think the
brand gave the date of cutting.

For pine sleepers, brand gave five pieces of information: the weight of
rail that could be accommodated for the boring pattern, the gauge of the
boring, the type of fastening/bedplate, the hole size (which determined
the screwspike to be used) and the year of treatment.

Pine sleepers were almost always adzed and bored before being treated
with creosote, whereas Aussie hardwoods were adzed and bored on site.
Hence the different information in the brands. Incidentally, there was no
real need for the track staff to know just what the hardwood timber was -
and most of them just referred to "hardwoods". It was a bit different for
the bridge inpectors, because the decay and splitting behaviours of the
timbers in bridges was of some significance to them.

Bill

[pmcall"npspam"@es.co.nz]

The only date nails I have seen are all pre-war. Look like a large flat head
nail with a very large disc head.

[secretary.nor...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, July 4, 1998 at 7:00:00 PM UTC+12, P Whitcombe wrote:
> Attn. New Zealand Rail Buffs.
> Can any one help me please!!!!!
>
> Can any one tell me where i can obtain some NZ "date nails" please.
> many thanks
>
> Paul Whitcombe.
> email: pwit...@ihug.co.nz

Hi Paul

In case you are still interested. I have a small bag of NZ railway date nails, some of which are more than 100 years old now. There is also a bit of history about them on the Railway Exhibitis Paekakariki web page.

Janette

[John Levine]

In article <22810d2b-f968-42d0...@googlegroups.com>,

Since that request was made 19 years ago, do let us know if you get a response.

--
Regards,
John Levine, jo...@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly