AirmetTango
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With a couple hours to kill, I went back to the same park that fooled me last week with a crusty 10” deep coin with a beautiful green patina that turned out to be a clad quarter. Yep, I’m a glutton for punishment 
But since there’s good history there, and there were so many areas of the park I hadn’t explored yet, I figured it was worth another visit to see if I could get over something good. Well, at the end of the hunt, I managed $1.56 in clad, 14¢ of which consisted of rotting Zincolns - not exactly what I was hoping for! 
But halfway through the hunt I got over something that demonstrates why I tolerate digging those Zincoln signals in parks. As I hunted the turf paralleling a stream that cuts through the park, I got the familiar “ting, ting” and solid 21 VDI (EQ800) as I swung back and forth. I didn’t spend a lot of time evaluating the signal at all - I turned slightly and swung two or three times again just to confirm it wasn’t junk. Still solid 21, showing no more than 4” deep, and the tone across the board had a consistent “good”, tight quality to it. All this I evaluated in less than 3 seconds. Yep - this was a high probably of a Zincoln.
But you never know, so I cut my plug. It didn’t take long to realize something was up...as I dug down toward 6”, it was clear this item was deeper and, maybe more importantly, bigger than expected. “Dang it...fooled by can slaw?” From about 7” down, I unearthed a big, thin square of corroded metal, curled a bit on one end. At first it just looked like a random chunk of discarded iron, but as I examined it, I thought I could make out a letter or two on the surface. Knocking some dirt out of the curl, I noticed it had a slot cut along the top...”cool, maybe it’s some sort of old tool tag”, I thought.
When I got it home, it became clear that the cleaning was going to be a chore - this thing was beyond crusty! What I originally thought was dirt on the surface turned out to actually be a concrete-like layer tenaciously adhering to the metal surface:
All my usual cleaning methods proved almost completely ineffective, so I turned to my newest best friend, naval jelly. It took several rounds of naval jelly followed by baking soda, but I finally started wearing down the crud enough to see what I had...an old railway baggage tag, my first!
I still hadn’t cleaned off quite enough crud to get a positive ID on the railway with the naval jelly. Since I was unavoidably down to bare metal in plenty of spots to make the progress I had, I decided I may as well go all in and clean even more aggressively. I started hitting it with 0000 steel wool and finally revealed the lettering in full: “T. & I. Ry. Co.”
The Toledo and Indiana Railway Company was an electric interurban rail line incorporated in 1901 to provide service from Toledo to Bryan, OH as part of a network extending as far west as Indianapolis and Chicago. In 1910 and 1911, the railway underwent official name changes from “Railway Co.” to “Traction Co.” and then finally “Railroad Co.”, so that implies this tag could very well be from 1901-1910! The company abandoned their tracks and folded in 1939 after improved roads, greater prevalence of cars and trucks, and the Great Depression all combined to make financial life way to difficult for interurban lines everywhere. And it turns out the rail line passed not too far from the park. Here’s a couple sites with a little history on the company:
https://digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org/digital/collection/transport/id/8468/
http://thevillagereporter.com/1901-the-toledo-indiana-railway-incorporated/
A cool little piece of local history, and I have no doubt it got passed over by countless other hunters because it sounded like a Zincoln.
But since there’s good history there, and there were so many areas of the park I hadn’t explored yet, I figured it was worth another visit to see if I could get over something good. Well, at the end of the hunt, I managed $1.56 in clad, 14¢ of which consisted of rotting Zincolns - not exactly what I was hoping for! But halfway through the hunt I got over something that demonstrates why I tolerate digging those Zincoln signals in parks. As I hunted the turf paralleling a stream that cuts through the park, I got the familiar “ting, ting” and solid 21 VDI (EQ800) as I swung back and forth. I didn’t spend a lot of time evaluating the signal at all - I turned slightly and swung two or three times again just to confirm it wasn’t junk. Still solid 21, showing no more than 4” deep, and the tone across the board had a consistent “good”, tight quality to it. All this I evaluated in less than 3 seconds. Yep - this was a high probably of a Zincoln.
But you never know, so I cut my plug. It didn’t take long to realize something was up...as I dug down toward 6”, it was clear this item was deeper and, maybe more importantly, bigger than expected. “Dang it...fooled by can slaw?” From about 7” down, I unearthed a big, thin square of corroded metal, curled a bit on one end. At first it just looked like a random chunk of discarded iron, but as I examined it, I thought I could make out a letter or two on the surface. Knocking some dirt out of the curl, I noticed it had a slot cut along the top...”cool, maybe it’s some sort of old tool tag”, I thought.
When I got it home, it became clear that the cleaning was going to be a chore - this thing was beyond crusty! What I originally thought was dirt on the surface turned out to actually be a concrete-like layer tenaciously adhering to the metal surface:
All my usual cleaning methods proved almost completely ineffective, so I turned to my newest best friend, naval jelly. It took several rounds of naval jelly followed by baking soda, but I finally started wearing down the crud enough to see what I had...an old railway baggage tag, my first!
I still hadn’t cleaned off quite enough crud to get a positive ID on the railway with the naval jelly. Since I was unavoidably down to bare metal in plenty of spots to make the progress I had, I decided I may as well go all in and clean even more aggressively. I started hitting it with 0000 steel wool and finally revealed the lettering in full: “T. & I. Ry. Co.”
The Toledo and Indiana Railway Company was an electric interurban rail line incorporated in 1901 to provide service from Toledo to Bryan, OH as part of a network extending as far west as Indianapolis and Chicago. In 1910 and 1911, the railway underwent official name changes from “Railway Co.” to “Traction Co.” and then finally “Railroad Co.”, so that implies this tag could very well be from 1901-1910! The company abandoned their tracks and folded in 1939 after improved roads, greater prevalence of cars and trucks, and the Great Depression all combined to make financial life way to difficult for interurban lines everywhere. And it turns out the rail line passed not too far from the park. Here’s a couple sites with a little history on the company:
https://digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org/digital/collection/transport/id/8468/
http://thevillagereporter.com/1901-the-toledo-indiana-railway-incorporated/
A cool little piece of local history, and I have no doubt it got passed over by countless other hunters because it sounded like a Zincoln.
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