things i find in the woods....

wallytoo · April 13, 2017

23 hours ago, Dan Hiebert said:

Aha, here's the thread. I remembered Wallytoo's posts about stuff found in the woods that I had seen when we lived in western NY, but couldn't remember who posted them. We've since moved to northern Maine, and I'm finding all sorts of things in the woods. Thankfully, my job description would include that the whole state of Maine is my office, and I have to poke around the wilderness quite a bit.

hey, dan.

i once worked for IP up that way, out the american realty road, based near clayton lake. fantastic area. lots of stuff to find in the woods, too. you should visit the trains on the allagash waterway, as well as the tram near chamberlain.

wally

Dan Hiebert · April 13, 2017

1 hour ago, wallytoo said:

hey, dan.

i once worked for IP up that way, out the american realty road, based near clayton lake. fantastic area. lots of stuff to find in the woods, too. you should visit the trains on the allagash waterway, as well as the tram near chamberlain.

wally

Hi, Wally,

Yep, I'm familiar with the Realty Road and Clayton Lake. My agency has a base at Daaquam that I've been to a few times. Otherwise, most of my trips to Maine's western border have been via helicopter, which is a great way to see things to go back and find later from the ground. Those locomotives are on my list for this summer. Their location used to be a settlement called "Tramway" for obvious reasons to those in the know. My agency has a bit of history there that I want to explore.

Dan

Dan Hiebert · April 13, 2017

23 hours ago, Plymouthy Adams said:

that looks to be a fairly decent body and some follower out there in reader-land would love to snag that puppy

Yep, it's all there except for the rockers, quarters, and most of the floor. Maine used to be heavy on the road salt, then they added the stuff that really eats cars up (calcium chloride, I think), whatever it is, it's hard on vehicles. Most things you find in the woods here is well on its way to returning to nature. Kind of cool, in a sad sort of way.

Plymouthy Adams · April 13, 2017

well...I guess I could only report on the portion of the car shown in the pic....northern exposure as it is and added with some of the designs of European car (not all mind you but many) the built in rust traps are plentiful and seem to rust more from the inside-out than outside-in...I am working a Dodge body right now that has many similar body design/structural flaws....if it saw the weather..the weather took its toll

John Rogers · April 13, 2017

In my neck of the "woods" errrrrrrr desert out here in SE Arizona there are not any woods to find things in per se but I did stumble on this a while back a few miles from house. I dont know how many times I walked within 10 to 20 yards of this on my way out to some old 1880's ranch bunk house ruins and never noticed it as there is a fir bit of mesquite and creosote hiding it. Its a 1930 Buick Series 50 Coupe or whats left of one. There are no footpaths or anything out there. The old dirt road that led out to that area is long gone. Its only visable on Google Earth. The poor car has been there a loooooooong time. On a side note . Over the years while looking around at the site of the ranch bunk house ruins I found a silver 1884 10 Centavos in beautiful condition as well as many old mother of pearl and bone buttons. I also found a extremely old Chinese coin that is much much older than the Silver Mexican 10 centavos in addition to a broken pocket knife, straight razor, a intact old cork type beer bottle (Its rare to find one in one piece) and a live S&W 38 short round that was dated to 1883 all in the same place . From what I understand, over the years the ranch hands had Chinese cooks etc at the bunkhouse. That coupled with the fact that this is about 9 miles from Tombstone which had a lot of Chinese folks and businesses might explain the Chinese coin I found. My friend found several coins just like it in the same spot back in the early 60's.

John

Edited April 13, 2017 by John Rogers
There are times that I cant type or spell to save my life

Plymouthy Adams · April 13, 2017

makes you glad you up to date on your tetanus shot....!!!!!!!

Don Coatney · April 13, 2017

Hum, If you get lock jaw can you still post on the forum?

Best thing to find in the woods this time of the year are sponge mushrooms.

John Rogers · April 13, 2017

Wait, that's not desert patina? Awwww heck, if the lock jaw doesn't get you, the rattle snakes that more than likely call it home just might . Come to think of it, I better double check to see that my tetanus shot is up to date.

John

Plymouthy Adams · April 13, 2017

yes that Scorpion may not be an Abarth sticker.......be careful....snakes and wasps are our two biggest derelict dwellers..followed closely by the Black Widow...ocassionaly rat and or possum....

my bud picked a car out of the woods that a guy gave me when visiting Indiana long back...he spoke of driving down the road toward home and looked in his mirror to see a long piece of rope whipping about..he pulled over and walked back to see a huge wind whipped snake hanging out the trunk opening..he remarked had he seen it before, the car would still have been in the woods...

wallytoo · April 13, 2017

10 hours ago, Dan Hiebert said:

Hi, Wally,

Yep, I'm familiar with the Realty Road and Clayton Lake. My agency has a base at Daaquam that I've been to a few times. Otherwise, most of my trips to Maine's western border have been via helicopter, which is a great way to see things to go back and find later from the ground. Those locomotives are on my list for this summer. Their location used to be a settlement called "Tramway" for obvious reasons to those in the know. My agency has a bit of history there that I want to explore.

Dan

spent late fall a few years ago cruising the old mead and IP lands in bowmantown, oxbow and massachusetts gore. had a camper setup just south of abbie pond, with running water via a spring. used to go in by parmachenee and aziscohos, via bowmantown express. ran into a ME game warden up along the phlipstown area.

i'd sometimes see a canadian fishing, and they'd scurry away across the border.

familiar with daquaam, as thats's where we'd go across the border.

Dan Hiebert · April 14, 2017

It's certainly a distinct contrast between here and the southwest. Aside from growing up in Texas, I worked in west Texas and New Mexico the first half of my career. Same basic job description, go knock around in the willy-wags most of the time. If you were at the station, you weren't working. I'd find things out in the desert a hundred years old that looked like they were dropped yesterday. Lots of abandoned cars, trucks, and equipment. Got the cowl trim for our D24 off of one that had been dumped in an arroyo for erosion control that had been there at least 40 years, got our Fulton outside sun visor off of a P15 that had been sitting in a ranch pasture for longer than anyone there could remember. They just had to be cleaned and polished/painted. If the cars they were on hadn't been so beat-up or miles from a road, they'd probably have wound up in my yard.

wallytoo · October 16, 2017

a little foliage/etc.

wallytoo · October 23, 2017

Plymouthy Adams · October 23, 2017

got to love that rear leaf spring setup....have not seen a lady slipper in years, especially a pink one..the yellow was more prevalent in my neck of the woods

Edited October 23, 2017 by Plymouthy Adams

wallytoo · October 26, 2017

the pink is much more common in northern new england, but i do run into yellow once in a while.

wallytoo · November 16, 2021

been a while. found some more things:

Edited November 16, 2021 by wallytoo

Dodgeed · November 18, 2021

I always wonder about huge construction/road vehicles that are abandoned. How does that happen? Why would a company, or municipal government just leave stuff behind? It's got to be pretty expensive, and even thought it might be broken, couldn't it be towed out, and fixed? Makes no sense to me.

Dave72dt · November 18, 2021

It may have been a municipal unit that was sold off and purchased by a local landowner for private use. Landowner may not have needed it any longer and parked it. That unit probably goes back to the late 40's, early 50's, or whenever International was still designating models by letters. Looks like it was based off the M tractor.

Los_Control · November 19, 2021

43 minutes ago, Dodgeed said:

I always wonder about huge construction/road vehicles that are abandoned. How does that happen? Why would a company, or municipal government just leave stuff behind? It's got to be pretty expensive, and even thought it might be broken, couldn't it be towed out, and fixed? Makes no sense to me.

I have watched a few videos from these youtubers. ... They do a lot of recovery work.

Is pretty impressive the amount of equipment it takes to recover one of these old machines and get them to a shop where they can be repaired. In this video they say they bought the machine. I would not be surprised if was given to them just to get it out of the mountains. This is part 1 of a 2 part video.

I also like to watch JonathaW, I remember when he bought the old drag line crane. The farmer used it til it broke then just left it. Huge hassle to get it out to the road where it could be loaded & hauled away. Jonathan did it and made good video ..

He uses the crane all the time now.

I can see where a land owner farmer or rancher buys a grader from a auction for cheap. Uses it for the purpose intended.

They are finished with it, they saved money by doing it themselves. Later the item breaks and it is not worth fixing because they no longer need it. Will cost more to haul it to a shop for repairs then what they can sell it for.

Part 2

wallytoo · July 6, 2022

came across an interesting relic from the past yesterday. first one i've found in the woods....

wallytoo · July 11, 2022

a few more pics of it...

i'm pretty sure it's a V-plow, used for snow removal on these old town roads. guessing it dates from the 20s/30s originally, but probably abandoned here in the 50s, perhaps after its municipal road clearing duties were long over, and it finished its days for a logging outfit to clear the roads (because the town no longer plowed these roads by that time).

Edited July 11, 2022 by wallytoo

Merle Coggins · July 11, 2022

I thought the curved metal piece resembled a plow moldboard, but all the wood was throwing me off as to what it could be. I wouldn't believe they'd make a snow plow with wood.

wallytoo · July 12, 2022

i would guess that being new england yankees, they sought to use what was available and cheap to construct the plow. not so surprising for depression-era stuff.