Here's a couple of funny relics

[pritch]

This job I'm doing is just across the street from the old (and current, for that matter)
rock Springs, Wyoming railroad yards, and we have been digging up all kinds of old rusty junk. Most is unrecognizable, but we found this funny little tool.



At first we thought it was some kind of hammer, but as we knocked off more rust it looks more like some kind of splitting tool. The blunt end has been pounded on, and the sharp end is still very sharp. But the hole for the handle is tiny. A handle the size of the hole would break on the first blow. I think the tiny handle is for someone to hold the tool in place while someone else wails away with a BFH



Sorry, that's a blurry picture.


And then there's this thing.



My wife walked by when I was looking at this picture and she thought I was on the porno site. Be that as it may, it seems to be a pin of some kind. It's very heavy, probably a 5 pounder, and has a curve to it that suggests that it held a heavy load for many years. What kind of pins held the old time rail cars to one another?

[Billman49]

The hammer head look like a smith's cold set - a handled chisel used to split cold iron (as opposd to the hot set which was less robust as red hot iron, or steel, is much softer)... Similar were occasionally used to split stone...

The pin looks very much like a modern tractor lynch pin, and your guess as a pin for connecting rauilway wagons is probably good, but most likely not a full size railroad truck, but a smaller tramway, of the type used in mines, with a gauge of 1 to 2 ft and a payload of about 1/2 to 1 ton per waggon.... Pulled by horses (or mules , or ponies) they were used to haul spoil away from building sites etc...

[Branson]

Smith's cold cut for sure.   Just like you suspected, the smith holds the cut (or set) where he wants it, and an assistant strikes it with a BFH.  That's why the end is mushroomed over.