I have a plastic floored deck on the back of the house and it is way better than wood. It does not have expansion problems. It is UV stabilized (as are the garden railway track and cars) - has been there for years. IT is heavier than wood but does not twist and warp in the weather The wood stairs do.
Having been a plastic molder, generally you do not want contaminants. so putting rocks etc in is a BAD idea. There might be steel inserts to hold hardware, I do not know.
As far as supply, the biggest landfill problem is plastic cause the darn stuff doesn’t rot away. It may degrade, but it is still there.
And now, folks, the advantage of plastic ties that nobody has mentioned…until now!
Are you ready for this?
Tie-dyeing!
UP will order its plastic ties in Harbor Mist Gray. NS will choose black ones. So will KCS, but they’ll insist that it’s dark green. Amtrak-owned ties will be dyed with red ink. CSX will get dark blue ones, possibly pre-weathered. And BNSF still won’t be able to decide on a color.
No more problems for railfans concerning “What railroad is this?”!
[;)]
(I know it’s the wrong end of April for stuff like this, but this thread wasn’t around on the First)
CSX and CN, in a joint release, announced that they will not participate in the dyed-tie craze. Instead, they will attempt to cut costs on their track rehabilitation by holding the track gauge with the sprues left over from the Union Pacific’s plastic-tie program. UP’s shade of gray, say the two companies, most closely matches the color of faded wood in their existing ties.
And another bulletin: MC persuades the Denver RTD to use yellow plastic ties, on the grounds that the entire line is a STOOPID zone!
Rather than use Titinium Dioxide as the UV inhibitor - the two composite ties that I have had a chance to examine looked like they use carbon black. That is the same stuff that adds UV protection - and a few other performance characteristics - to tires. It’s a lot cheaper than TiDox.
That would give them the authentic looking, creosote color as well. That way, it won’t divert your attention away from the pretty trains in the photos.[:P]
I visited the Transportation Technology Center Inc. in Pueblo last month and saw several varieties of plastic ties that have been on the test track for years. For example, US Plastic Lumber (which supplied the ties for CTA) has had some ties that were installed in May 1997; 1.2 billion gross tons have run over them since. They seem to be holding up just fine.
Further, Bay Area Rapid Transit is replacing 2,000 ties with plastic versions. Check out this video. http://www.bart.gov/news/barttv/. The video in question is on page 2, dated April 16.
Now I’ve got to get back to deadlines. You do want your July issue on time, don’t you? Just FYI, we’re beginning design work on the September issue next week. It is still April outside, right? I’m so confused!!!
I’ve done some thinking about this subject over the weekend, and considering just how much plastic we have in our lives and it’s seemingly countless uses, it is not a real big surprise to me that some plastic would be used in the manufacturing of railroad ties.
I know we have a few composite cross ties on the Duncan Sub. The Rock Island installed them many moons ago and they are holding up really well, and I was thinking at Atoka, Ok. we had a few feet of a plastic/chip combination wood ties that are pretty old as well. I believe that because we don’t run as many trains on the Duncan Sub. as it saw in it’s hey-day has prolonged the life of these ties. If they were on the McAlester side they wouldn’t hold up as well.
We don’t want Railroad Reading in front of the Table of Contents come Labor Day (one of the all too few official railroad holidays) and we can’t have you worrying about it, we wouldn’t want you to get premature wrinkles from that…
Interesting that the plastic tie crowd is growing. Looks like many of them are still in light loading applications like transit or specialty locations.
Was just perusing the April 2007 issue of Progressive Railroading (PR hmmmm wonder why they chose that name…lol). The one with “MOW Dollars” on the front cover and the informal survey of Class 1s, Regionals, Short Lines and some Commuter and Transit properties. Of the lines surveyed only UP showed composite ties being installed and only NYC MTA showed plastic ties being installed in the transit (subway) part of their operations.
At the same token, what if you mix recycle plastic with recycle rubber with compounds to stablizie the chemical effects of the enviroments? i.e. expansion, contractions, UV, etc.[8D]
Seems to me recycled plastic would act as a filler with fiberglass and epoxy resin to provide the requisite wear, strength, rigidity, and dimensional stability.
Ties might be formed by rolling layers of fiberglass fabric, recycled plastic filler, and resin before molding with additional recycled plastic (like a tire) for tie plate seats and ballast-gripping nubs. Ties may need to be drilled for screw-holding inserts after molding that would be glued in place.
One issue may be weight inasmuch as tie mass improves track stability, a benefit of concrete.
