There is symmetry in all we see, but not always recognized for what it is. Take the everyday mundane railroad track, not something that would factor into our everyday thinking and for good reason as its not something we need to know. The railroad track is in itself somewhat of a carefully calculated design & model of efficiency designed to carry railroad equipment with ease and punctuality, well most of the time anyway. The road bed that will hold the track is graded to a precise level as the ties that go down have to be even and level. Stone is used for this as the road bed is graded to a certain height & beveled at the sides to allow proper drainage of water. The spacing of each tie has to be exact as its about weight distribution of equal measure. If you look in the lower right corner you will see the " draw line " that is used as a guide to precise lining up of each tie. On the edge of the road bed you will see the tie plates all lined up along the right of way along with the rails also. These are the plates that are laid on the ties then spikes are hammered into them to hold the rails in place. But the spikes are not driven in entirely all the way as they are left to stick ever so slightly above the flange of the rail. The reason for this is what they call " give ' so the track can flex and the engine,cars & freight capacity can ride smoothly on the tracks the rails moving up and down equally to the weight of the cars and engine, sometimes the track compression can be as much as 1 to 3 inches as the train passes over the rails. When railroads tear up tracks, they salvage the ties, the ones that are in good shape, the tie plates, the rails and the spikes also. You can see on the tie plate the various dates they were made. On this particular stretch of line the tie plates ranged in date from 1938 to 1986, some were stamped CNR, other CPR & some with just a date When this line is finally laid out and spiked then a second layer of stone will be used as what is called road bed, to finish the tracks off to give it that look we all see & have come to know and understand as " railroad tracks " that perhaps as kids we walked along the tracks picking up the multi colored stones and tossing them idyl into the woods or where ever our aim took us on those hot summer days long ago........ ..........thanks for the peek