Most decent scrap yards will have a few feet laying around which they will sell cheap.
Hell, I dont know what the attraction is to railroad track anyway. If you visit a scrapyard you can find plenty of good steel to beat on. Big blocks of it, cylinders, whatever you want.
Maybe because its shape suggests it wouldn't take much work to turn it into something like a London Pattern anvil? (The absolute proof that looks can be deceiving) :)
Really, you're absolutely right. There are many shapes of steel laying around scrapyards that work quite well for anvils. Some work far better for certain purposes than a regular anvil.
For example, if one is making knives, a 4" X 4" square, 6 or 8 inches long and solidly mounted works very well for forging blades. All the piece really needs is to round over the sides of the square a bit.
Heck, the earliest smiths probably used whatever was at hand that was solid and somewhat hard for an anvil, often a rock or a plain iron block.
The Iron Age dates back to 3500 BCE or thereabouts. Lots and lots of ideas have been tried in that time. Experimenting is fun, too! :)
After 120 years of that, no wonder most chose to drown rather than spend 40 days and nights cooped up on a boat with that guy.
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