hehe and go for a little joyride. I was like you "okay, grandpa, go throw the switch, and with my limited knowledge of trainz cab mode, and all the videos and books i've read, we should be in El Paso in no time!" 
Just last month a man was electrocuted because he tried to steal some wires from a high speed railway!IIRC it was 2 guys and they ripped up quite a bit of track but that doesn't really matter. They cut it into smaller pieces so they could fit it into their truck. It was recovered at the scrap yard but the EBT couldn't reuse any of it. I'm not sure the Kovalchicks owned the yard in question but they're in the scrap business and sent out inquires. I mean what else would these bozos do with old rail that's been sitting out in the weather for the last 55 years besides try to sell it for scrap.
Sawyer, we have two sectiond of track in our front yard, each about 60 or so feet long, complete with wooden ties and real tie plates and spikes on them. to top it off we have a cement whistle post, crossing sign that works with the rotating of a switch, and a wooden train that my dad built on them. The only bad part is that they are 3' guage, but they are still awesome.Well, Back in '98 or so when the coal train piled up in Parkville (a little town near me that's bisected by a BNSF railway line) there was a lot of bent, twisted, sawn-to-peices rail left by the company after they replaced the torn up track. they were going to scrap it, and one day, my dad and i were down there when some workers were up throwing it in the back of trucks to haul off, and we asked, "hey, can we have a little bit of that?" to my surprise, they said, "sure!." now i've got about a 1.5-2ft section of rail that's ben torn at a ragged diagonal at one end, torched in a straight line at the other, sitting in my front yard. I love it. It's my favorite peice of railroad memorabilia i have