My dad found a piece of rail from my grandmother's house that he gave meI was wondering what time and place it may have come fromI'm pretty sure it's pre-1900It's a Bridge Rail, 4 3/16quot; wide on the bottom, 2 1/8quot; wide on the top, and about 3 1/8quot; tallIt has no markings, no nothingJust a piece of railI was wondering if anybody could tell me what railroad it may have been from or what time frame it may have been fromIt is especially interesting to me because I want to be a locomotive engineer.
Distilled water contains no ions and will not conduct electricity.
copper is the best insulator for electricity compare to aluminiumdistilled water has no ions so it cannot conduct eletricity.
Distilled waterAn insulator will not conduct electricityFor electricity to flow, you need charged particles to bump into each other to pass it alongDistilled water has had all of these particles distilled out of it and so it cannot conduct electricity and is a great insulator
You are making the assumption that it was used on a railroadFor many years after they went out of favour on railroads, bridge rails have been used for overhead gantry cranes in factoriesIn the UK, the British Standard specification for them was withdrawn as recently as 2002, but they are still obtainable and used probably as replacements for damaged gantry crane tracksYour example is dimensionally similar to Section 28 apart from the base widthAs they were invariably installed directly on to the uppermost flange of deep rolled steel beams, their relatively low beam strength when compared to bullhead or flat bottomed rails was not important, hence their survival in the crane industryThe Mach 5.5 High Supersonic Speed Wind Tunnel at RAE Bedford, at the Cutting edge of technology when it was commissioned in the 1960s, was serviced by a gantry crane running on bridge railsThere is every possibility that your piece of rail never got nearer to a railroad, than as an item being delivered in a freight carEdit:- Note on Section 28 added.