Logging artifact?....and some shrooms.

[Killer Kyle]

Hey guys and gals. I have a question. I stumbled across this thing in the woods wild fishing for brook trout about five years ago. Last week, Buckman and I went there to fish, and I told him to be on the lookout. When I found it, it was sticking up half buried in the dirt, and I couldn't budge it. When Buckman and I went back last week, it had been dug up and was clean, and was lying on top of some not very rotten limbs, which indicates it was dug up not too terribly long ago. It was lying in when we assumed to be an old trolley / railbed from the logging days. I was climbing out of the creek right before Buckman spotted the artifact, and while pulling myself up, I found an old steel cable. I'm certain they're from the logging days, but I'm curious about WHAT the part is. I have been searching and searching google for key words with the serial #'s and such, and coming up empty handed.
Do any of you have any idea what it might be? My initial guess was a train part, but after doing some research, and realizing that it was near the broken steel cable, I came to believe that perhaps it might be something like a part of a "steam donkey", the old steam powered wenches. That makes as much sense to me, and I was wondering if this part might be some kind of vent to a chimney stack or grate to a firebox or something like that. I've been looking through a lot of old parts and just can't seem to figure out what it is. It has a serial number which looks something like 56-66 BLR, although it is becoming corroded, and is somewhat difficult to read. It is of course made of iron.
I also decided to throw in a few shroom pics into this thread just because! These shrooms were found pretty close to the old logging artifacts. Thanks for the help, and hope y'all enjoy picking shrooms. Mother Nature sure has been good to us this year!

-Kyle

 

[XIronheadX]

I think it's part of a 3 or 4 piece circular grate for a boiler(BLR) used for the steam in the lumber industry way back, Kyle. Wood waste fired boilers.

Nice find and the meal looks good.

I ran across something about Walsh and Weldner blr out of Chattanooga. Not sure on the numbers.

 

[Killer Kyle]

Ironhead...I was hoping you'd chime in! I was wondering if BLR was referencing a boiler. But I looked at many diagrams of boilers and their parts and couldn't find an example of a grate like that. I think that what I saw mostly were diagrams of more recent boilers and such.

There is just something cool about old iron. I don't know what that thing weighed, but I tried to lift it off the ground and could barely get it up. It felt like 70 lbs or somewhere thereabout. I talked to the man that used to manage the WMA,and he found an old cattle catcher off a train or trolley down in that drain bottom back in the late 80's. He also found an abandoned sawmill in another bottom around the same time. I am going in there this winter when the leaves are off to see if I can find them and photograph them. There's just something cool about finding remnants like that deep in the Appalachian mountains along wild brook trout streams. So much of that history of the hills is being lost and forgotten.

 

[XIronheadX]

 

[XIronheadX]

I found that on images. There's no telling what's back in them hills from the old days. It's always cool to run across old stuff.