Thanks for the input everyone…with the price of steel as high as it’s been I can’t see steel replacing wood anytime soon. But why hasn’t concrete caught on more than it has?
Here’s a couple of threads that have discussed that very question:
Cool…thanks alot.
Back to the question at hand, could it be termites??? Consider, y’all are talking bout the creosote leaching out of the wood and into the surrounding ground; so in a period of time, possibly before the useful life of the tie has expired, the tie loses it’s insect proofing and the termies get to it! Last I hear the termies can’t eat steel! Have to make them out of corten steel or the rust will get you as bad as the termies.
Consider now, that Amtrack has announced a humongeous project to replace concrete ties that are crumbling. While concrete ties were once thought to be the answer, all the vibration and weather exposure combined seemingly make it less than ideal for use as ties!
If I were curious enough about it I’d write or e-mail the PR dept at NS and ask why they are experimenting with/ installing steel ties!
On-line supplier like SDI, perhaps? IIRC, the steel ties delivered to a site I worked came from them, just up the line.
Well, and I lived next to a rail line for over 40 years, and that creosote never caused my car to rust !! [swg]
However, it does seem to me that MR or someone just put something in about railroad ties or buildings saying something like “creosote was often used until the 1970’s, when it was banned for environmental reasons”. Maybe that article in MR about building a wood loading platform an issue or two back??
Over the last 2-3 days Norfolk Southern has distributed at least several hundred (more probably several thousand) of genuine, glorious black freshly pressure-treated creosoted ties along the Lehigh Line, from Allentown west to at least as far as Alburtis (about halfway to Reading). So they’re not obsolete yet, banned, restricted, etc. by any means.
To modify a others’ line, but we really used to say it on the track gangs (mostly in sarcastic jest, though):
“I love the smell of creosote in the morning !”
- Paul North.
I agree. You can’t beat the smell of creosote.
That was another thing pointed out in the letter I mentioned. That smoky flavor you like in your barbequed meat? Creosote…
I like creosote’s smell later in a hot spring day, when they’ve cooked enough and the (stick) rails expand to produce their rare music.
John Cage could have rigged up a symphony in a building as long as the Taylor Model Boat Basin in Bethesda MD. Do-do-do-dah. A close encounter!
Right now in DC, we get treated to Metro’s acrid traction motor/disc brake smells and smoke that sometimes drives (ride don’t drive here if you can) everyone out of the underground stations.
RIXFLIX
Whoops!
I almost forgot about the steel sleepers in Viet Nam. In a mostly tropical but o’wise paddy kind of place, why would the the French use them? In '68 to '69 I survived in LZ Uplift on Route 1 at a pass out out of the fertile Binh Dinh triangle. The railway had been pretty much destroyed above Phu Kat airbase. We saw a sideways (mikado?) and a multi-spanned deck girder bridge dropped neatly (elephant style) into a river on our trips north to LZ English.
It was strange seeing the remains of the French colony while living in the failure of our own.
Wish my hold baggage could have held a steel sleeper and one of the loopy l’art-nouveau lamp posts the French left behind in towns both big and tiny.
Once in a while I think I’d like to “tour” Nam again. I mean that the people/place were/was beautiful when my architect’s mind (often grass inspired) could erase the war’s hellish intrusions. Then I reconsider and it always comes up “Nope!”.
Sorry for getting a little off thread,
RIX
…Still waiting for “creasote” Bulls-Eye myself Larry [:D]
Your on the right track. Steel ties were used first, IIRC, on colonial railways in the tropics that had to deal with termites. This was before 1900 I think. At that time a lot of railways still had untreated ties so the termites were eating them almost as fast as they could lay new ties.
Have to do some research in my few books about African railways. I think they were used very early in Kenya and Tanzania, South Africa maybe too.
greetings,
Marc Immeker
Steel ties in anything other than industrial track are an unhappy solution. They will not hold surface and alignment making the cost of maintenance exorbitant and the ride quality poor. If you have them, you will soon look for ways to get rid of them.
All is not lost, however. As any house contractor from Turkey to India will point out, they make good rebar for concrete house roofs.
RWM