Kids Eye View: What are those railroad spikes doing in our city streets?

As a grown up I don't pay nearly as much attention to the asphalt as I used to when I was a kid. As a kid growing up in Manhattan, the asphalt was like an entire eco-system, full of magical discoveries waiting to be made and questions to be solved. Like seeing a dime completely embedded into the street, oil slicks from leaking cars that created beautiful rainbows or, when it would rain, gutter streams that we would sail trash down (ah, the bucolic 70s in NYC).

One thing that always fascinated me was when you would happen upon a railroad spike sticking out of the street. My mother explained to me about how they were from old trolley lines that had been paved over and then the movement of the earth forces them back up through the pavement.  Really? This whole idea rocked my world because obviously the pavement is the ground and solid and there can't be anything under there, especially not stuff that can move and come up through the solid ground. If history can just push itself back up into the present, what else is under there waiting to turn up?

On Tuesday I happened to notice these spikes coming up through the street in two different spots: The northwest corner of Union Square has a great one that is poking up and not even bent over yet. And the one above I shot at the corner of Greenwich and Chambers. Forgotten NY has a whole page of photos and locations where you can see entire pieces of the trolley line rails showing through the street. Keep an eye out and next time you see one point it out to your kids, if they don't point it out to you first.

Find out more about cool stuff under the ground in NYC in our Kid's Guide to New York Underground.