Built in the 1940s in Barstow, CA using railroad ties.
https://www.vvng.com/historic-el-rancho-motel-in-barstow-destroyed-by-fire/
Built out of stinky, creosote ties? That seems like a tinder box ready to burst into flames. I saw a lake cabin one time that was built out of used creosote telephone poles, nasty.
There’s some distant video on the Virtual Railfan FB page, I believe.
I never understood the fascination with creosote ties.
When you see people lining their flowerbeds and decks with those nasty things - ugh.
For landscaping I can see the use of old ties - at least old ties that still have integrity.
However, the ties being removed from todays track tend to be used beyond any integrity.
Creasoted wood wil last longer exposed to the ground and weather.
And slowly turn your yard into Love Canal as a bonus.
Not quite that bad.
I still wouldn’t eat anything from a garden surrounded by ties…
It’s undergoing its 15-year EPA review currently.
A track worker built a cabin near Sandpatch using old ties and he couldn’t use it because of the fumes.
Most of the uses I have seen used ties being used in have been holding back embankments and other situations where what you can buy at Home Depot or Lowes won’t get the job done.
Railroad ties, &$%#@
In the mid-80’s, I worked for a lumber yard that would advertize the nastiest used ties cheap. Our yard was out near the big local packing plant. Never failed, when the customer showed up wanting to buy a dozen ties, he had just dropped off hogs at the packing plant. Inevitably, they would send Grandpa, who had his arm in a sling and couldn’t help load them in trailer full of pig sh…slop. Oh, and Grandpa needed them all the way to the front so the trailer would ride well. Over time. we developed a way to use a forklift and homemade apparatus to shove them in there without having to skate through pig slop in a hot livestock trailer. Pig poop is probably one of the only things that can outstink creosote.
That guy on the postcard looks familiar…[D)]
Unless you want to filch them from a stack of replaced ties along a ROW, I’m pretty sure that most used ties get “remediated” these days. You won’t find them at the home improvement store.
I did a raised bed vegetable garden with well weathered ties about 20 years ago with no health issues yet apparent.
Fresh tomatoes with a shelf life into December is kinda nice too. [dinner]
They must have stuccoed? over the ties – wonder when.
Was pig slop considered creasote remediation?
I think most old ties have most everything leached out of them anyhow. But, someone decided they were a hazard…
As an aside - a significant percentage of the hothouse tomatoes (fresh are clearly better) sold in NYS come from a facility near Buffalo. That, in and of itself, is of no consequence. The hothouses are heated (and cooled) with waste heat from some big Diesel generators, which in turn are fueled by the waste methane from a landfill…
Our regional landfill here doesen’t have a greenhouse, but does have the generators, feeding the grid with the leftovers from someone’s dinner a while back…
Murph,
Growing up, I spent my summers on my grand parents pig farm. After a couple weeks you don’t notice the smell, much,ther were anly 300. They had the 75 milk cows next door. Oh, the farm house was east of the barns. RR ties would have been purfume in comparison
I like that…good, sensible use of waste heat. I’ve seen a number of projects where methane from municipal sewage is used to operate fuel cells, From all indications that appears to be dependably “renewable”.