Reinforced Concrete Railroad Tics.

Progress, Volume VII, Issue 4, 1 February 1912, Page 993

Reinforced Concrete Railroad Tics.

At a recent meeting of the Roadmasters and Maintenance of Way Association, held at St. Louis, September 12 to 15, the problem of tie material was carefully considered. A summary of the discussion was as follows: As has been said many times, it may be in the near future it will be impossible to procure wood for ties and something will have to be substituted in place of wood. Quite a number of roads are commencing to use, to some extent, steel or concrete ties, and a great many roads have been and are experimenting with both concrete and steel ties of every conceivable shape and make. Owing to the fact that some of these ties now being tried are comparatively heavy and hard to handle, this necessarily makes them quite expensive not only as far as the first cost is concerned, but in regard to their maintenance cost also. Some of the new designs of steel, as

well as concrete ties, are so constructed as to make them hard to apply on tracks where automatic signals are in operation on account of the difficulty of getting proper insulation; some of them are so constructed that it is hard to apply the rail to them with anything but a bolt and nut, which by some railroads is not considered a satisfactory fastening. Again owing to the salt brine that comes from refrigerator cars, as well as to the fact that the nuts may be hard to keep tight, and also in ease of a derailment of a heavy engine or car, the fastenings might become so damaged that new ties and fastenings would have to be applied before the track could be made safe or put in usable condition, the problem is a hard one to solve. First, we must consider how much the first cost of the new tie would be. Second, we should consider how much more it is going to cost to handle the tie, on account of its weight, shape, kind of fastening, etc. Third, we should consider the safety of the appliance by which the rail is fastened to the tie. Fourth, we should consider how much labour it is going to require first to fasten the rail to the ties, and how much labour it is going to require to keep them in proper shape. Fifth, we should consider how durable and efficient the contrivance is for proper insulation in all kinds of weather, on all kinds of roadbeds and under all kinds of traffic. Owing to the fact that the time has come, as we have said before; when it seems as if we would have to begin to figure on something to substitute for wood ties, should we not stop and take into consideration whether or not a steel or concrete tie, made a little wider and not quite so deep would answer the purpose of a tie, if a tie made a little bit wider and not quite so deep would answer the purpose of a tie, it would not require so many ties for a mile of track and we would get the same amount of bearing on our rail and on our roadbed as we have now, and it would not take so much material to make the ties; therefore, the ties would not cost so much. And if the tie was not so deep as the tie we are using at present, it would require less labour to put the tie in, as well as less labour to tamp the tie, which would be quite a saving. This is very important, as a number of trunk lines are ballasting their roads with stone, slag, or some other hard material which is more expensive to handle in every way. If a tie could be constructed so that we could narrow up the shoulders and still have the same amount of ballast up against the end of the tie, this would be another saving, and a tie made thinner than the ties we are now using would not require so much ballast to fill in between the ties, which would be another saving. During the past six or eight months we have received illustrations of concrete ties, on which at present there are patents. We have become quite interested in them, and while some are not the same shape as the ties we have always been used to using, some of them look to be practical for railway use. It is a fact that the first cost of them would be considerably more than our present tie, but the amount of labour saved in handling them and put-

ting them in the track, etc., tamping them after they are in track and the amount of ballast saved owing to their peculiar make-up would almost enable a railway company to tie up their tracks at the same expenditure it is costing us now to put in wood ties.—“ Cement Age.”