NS is replacing what seems to be thousands of ties throughout the Enola yard and tracks leading to it. I’m seeing truckloads of old ties just being stacked for later removal. What becomes of these old ties?
there was a show on History Channel like 6-7 yrs called boneyard and it showed them beeing shredded and turned into fuel for a wood burning power plant. and they can be used for around the house to.
Most of the old wooden ties here in Arizona are used to build retaining walls by landscaping comapanies or individuals.
Old ties are sometimes stockpiled and sold to ‘brokers’ who will resell them in retail settings, for landscaping purposes. You mentioned that the tie replacement was a NS project at Enola. Not sure if they still do it, but they used to have a rail-mounted machine ( actually, it might be called a ‘wood-chipper’ on steroids.) that was part of the tie replacement gang; the old ties were fed into it; the machine would shred them, then blow them out on the R.O.W. It was one loud, noisey operation! Out here BNSF seems to use the stockpiling method, later they are picked up with cranes mounted on Brendt trucks to be hauled off - somewhere for disposition(?)
From my own experience, in the past, when an abandoned line, like the Illinois Central line in our area, is pulled up, it goes something like this: The railroad salvage company sells them to a third party broker. That broker then bundles them up, carefully putting the best looking ones on the outside of each bundle. Mr. Broker then sells them to some dim-bulb purchasing agent at a chain of lumberyards, who then has them advertised at about 14 cents under cost as a loss leader.
The folks that purchase them want the ones that look like the photos in the advertising- the ones that look so good that no railroad would tear them out. Inevitably, the people buying the ties send Grandpa with the broken arm in to pick them up, because he has the stock trailer, having just delivered hogs to the sale barn. Grandpa is adamant that the ties need to be slid clear to the front of the stock trailer- through the piggie poo in the August heat- so that the weight will be on the hitch.
In the end, the lumberyard chains loses 14 cents per tie. Farmer Bob builds a retaining wall build out of rotten, greasy railroad ties covered with hog manure. The guys at the lumberyard take turns putting pins in a voodoo doll that looks like the dim-witted purchasing agent.
Used ties like the ones mentioned from NS may have a better afterlife. A local company in our area grinds trees, pallets and used wood to make fuel for a local ethanol plant. They don’t accept railroad ties, citing environmental concerns over burning the creosote.
ROTFLMAO [:D] [tup]
Good creative writing.
Now that’s one of the best descriptions of what happened to the ties I bought for the yard. I must have got the one grandpa returned!!!
If they still have some life left in them, they may be reused by the railroad elsewhere. Or they may be sold to short line or tourist railroads.
Jeff
Up here, there’s a field that the NYC, Penn Central, and then Conrail disposed them in. Were still there at least 3 or 4 years ago, although I assume that CSX has never dumped discarded ties at this site after inheriting the St. Lawrence line with the breakup of Conrail in the late 1990’s.
I believe this is the spot.
Companies like Home Depot used to sell used railroad ties. Some still have product entries for them on their online storefronts, so I assume that at least in some regions, it still happens.
Maybe experience speaking?
[quote user=“edblysard”]
Murphy Siding
From my own experience, in the past, when an abandoned line, like the Illinois Central line in our area, is pulled up, it goes something like this: The railroad salvage company sells them to a third party broker. That broker then bundles them up, carefully putting the best looking ones on the outside of each bundle. Mr. Broker then sells them to some dim-bulb purchasing agent at a chain of lumberyards, who then has them advertised at about 14 cents under cost as a loss leader.
The folks that purchase them want the ones that look like the photos in the advertising- the ones that look so good that no railroad would tear them out. Inevitably, the people buying the ties send Grandpa with the broken arm in to pick them up, because he has the stock trailer, having just delivered hogs to the sale barn. Grandpa is adamant that the ties need to be slid clear to the front of the stock trailer- through the piggie poo in the August heat- so that the weight will be on the hitch.
In the end, the lumberyard chains loses 14 cents per tie. Farmer Bob builds a retaining wall build out of rotten, greasy railroad ties covered with hog manure. The guys at the lumberyard take turns putting pins in a voodoo doll that looks like the dim-witted purchasing agent.
Used ties like the ones mentioned from NS may have a better afterlife. A local company in our area grinds trees, pallets and used wood to make fuel for a local ethanol plant. They don’t accept railroad ties, citing environmental concerns over burning the creosote.
From that link, and my comments:
• Relay Grade [good enough to reuse in some tracks]
• Construction Grade [mostly solid, but too much deterioration in the tie plate area to use in track]
• Landscape Grade [even more deterioration, might be some in the body of the tie, too]
• 6"x8"x8’ [small industrial siding size tie]
• 7"x9"x8’ [almost a mainline tie, usually 8’-6" though]
• 7"x9"x9’ [mainline tie, some western RRs use 9’]
• 7"x9"x9’-16’ [switch timbers, but condition of those can vary, too]
About 22 years ago the neighbor on one side of my former house had a huge wall (5’ to 8’ high) built with second-hand ties to support his new in-ground pool and the patio around it. Fortunately, it was slightly downhill from my house, because those ties did not look very solid, and I did not think much of the abilities of the engineer he hired to design it. After a few years I half-expected any heavy rain or thawing after hard winter would result in the wall collapsing and a small-scale dam break washing out the next neighbor down the hill. I did hear some complaints from him abo
If it’a yard tie that came out, then it’s really [xx(][xx(][xx(]
In our town, a speculator bought all the ties from miles of ROW being abandoned. He leased a field, apparently to sort out the good ones, and left the rest. 20 years later, there sets in that field acres of rotting ties. Its a site of environmental concern, but apparently low prioriy.
Your story reminds me of an experience I had several years ago when I was working part-time in a lumber yard. Among other things, we ripp
Some years ago, as part of a CB&Q Historical Society convention in Galesburg IL we went on a tour of the fascinating (and “aromatic”) Koppers tie plant which is south and west of the BNSF yard. They described a process where old ties are injected with resins and preservatives at high pressure and run through the presumably same kilns as new raw ties, and have a very good renewal useful life. If you go to Galesburg you’ll see cars (sometimes old Thrall coal gons, sometimes really antique GS gondolas) in the yard filled with old ties being sent to Koppers. And there is fairly good public access to the west side of Koppers where you can see their trackmobile switching their yard of cars with raw timbers, treated new ties, old ties, and treated used ties. What you cannot see unless you are lucky enough to have a tour is the little narrow gauge railroad cars that send the ties in for treatment. Very neat operation and I wish I’d taken more photos than I did (those were 35mm slide days - if I had had digital back then I would have taken 1000 pictures).
I imagine not every old tie can be reclaimed in this way, but the guy told us that even pretty wide cracks and gaps can be effectively filled with these resins. I no longer recall whether this reclamation is something that could be done just once, or repeatedly.
He also mentioned that this process caused the BNSF to decrease or cease the use of those automatic tie replacement machines that chopped a tie in half and shot the halves out both directions to the sides of the ROW. Probably a lot of reusable ties were destroyed for years using those machines. I saw one being used on the C&NW in the late 1970s, early 1980s and it was quite a show!
Dave Nelson
I hope the original poster got the answer he was looking for…before I ramble on about the subject…
When we built our new lumberyard and rail spur 6 years ago, the railroad said that new ties were roughly the same cost as used ties.
When I’m out in the country trying to folllow or discover an abandonded rail line, I look for fences that have railroad ties for corner posts.
Use for used railroad ties: Attracting aliens? Back in my days of working at the above referenced chain lumberyard with the dim-witted marketing guy, we had one customer that no one wanted to deal with. He was an older gentelman, who wore about a dozen lady’s wristwatches up each arm, and mumbled a lot. He would buy exactly one railroad tie, and hand select the perfect one. He would then pay 15 dollars to have it delievered at an empty lot about a mile away. The delivery driver would have to unload the railroad tie, and then position it in a certain way on the ground. No one could make much sense of his rhyme or reason, but over time there was a circular effect that must have looked something like Stonehenge when viewed from above (in the mother ship?). [alien]
One issue to which many of the posts alluded was environmental concerns. Creosote and more recent preservatives have to be considered as they do have an adverse residual effect and need to be disposed of safely. That probably explains why old ties aren’t used in landscaping as much as in the past.
Overblown …usually if you have an old tie, even treated by the old process, the creosote is long gone. If it wasn’t - you wouldn’t be able to pick the tie up by yourself. With yard ties, you would normally have only splinters at the end of the tie’s service life.
Most local agencies operate under an abundance of caution - others though, have gone out into an incredible level of absurdity (same people who believe everything out there on the internet or that they overheard is 100% true … Roadmasters deal with this almost daily anymore -along with the weedspray paranoids who ought to be locked in a room with the ob-noxious noxious weed enforcers [:-,])