In general I also agree about leaving historic artifacts where they are for the next person to view with 2 or 3 subjective exceptions.
Exception one would be spikes along stretches of the old SVRy and affiliated logging lines. They are so plentiful that if every rail fan walking the grades for the next 100 years took a pocket full they would still be plentiful. I rarely pick up this kind of rail hardware, unless I want to pass it on to someone else who might enjoy the novelty or it is something that actually could be used at SVRy. A great many of the spikes we find on the SVRy are straight enough to reuse. The small size spikes we sometimes find work great for temporary work around the yard.
Another subjective exception would be artifacts that are at locations where they are likely to be damaged or obliterated in the future. For example I recall finding a brake shoe in the side of the fill of a public road some distance from an actual ROW. Similarly I found a number of discarded locomtive brake shoes at a location where modern road construction went right through what was probably the scrap dump of a logging camp's engine shop. Probably I could have moved the shoes to a location out of harms way in the vicinity for someone else to find, but the entire sight seemed like it might be "cleaned up" in the future.
Third I guess would be items like old tin cans still with painted labels and other such items that are fast going away due to exposure to the elements, which might as well reside in my basement, or in a museum down the road rather than be left to rot. For example I have a piece of board from the SVRy S Wye water tank that still has just a touch of paint. Left out it probably would be gone to the elements in a few years.
Like Jerry Huck said, some of us have also found things like a coupler knuckle that went back into use on historic equipment. Taylor found a resevoir bleed valve with the pull rods still attached in the woods. I repaired the bleed valve and used it and the rods on cars we were restoring! Taylor has found a number of UN journal box covers. These could see use again. One of my friends found a resevoir and K triple in the woods. I think the res. was broke, but the triple valve might yield parts if we had it in the shop.
Let your conscience be your guide.....
