Fast Growing Trees from Southwestern Missouri - Tree Notebook, and more...: Railroad Ties

Railroad Ties - Amazing Use of Trees

One of the more fascinating uses of trees is for railroad ties.

When the weather turns chilly, I tend to watch more movies about the Old West. Typically, the movies are in hot, sunny, dry and treeless locations, and everyone is sweaty and warm. That somehow helps me to take the chill off. And in all of these westerns, they show the railroad. How can you have a western without a railraod, the ironhorse is the greatest icon of the old west, and associated with that are the railroad lines. Endless miles of track, over the dry and treeless terrain, all across the country, truly an amazing feat!

How amazing the railroad is, how they were built, without the modern power tools and massive machinery, particularly when looking at the railroad tie. From the begining of rail travel, the rails have been fastened onto wood ties. How many trees, or how many ties does it take per mile of track? Start to do the math, and the volume of trees and wood consumed is staggering! Sadly, I don't have any figures for this...

If a railroad tie is eight feet long, eight or ten inches on all sides, that would be typical for a tie. That would be about five cubic feet of wood per tie. And if each tie is spaced on two-foot centers (that is two feet apart), then for every mile of track, that would require about thirteen thousand cubic feet of wood (or about 2640 ties). Now mutliply that by the thousands of miles of track laid, even just to connect the eastern and western rail lines like they did in some of these movies, then thats a lot of wood!

And not just for railroad ties, but to make bridges, and used for fuel for the steam locomotive, that's a lot of wood! Not exactly certain of the math, but as a ballpark number, that is still a lot of wood!

Ok, if these numbers are plausible, where did wood come from? How many trees were used, and what species?

Well, if we can stretch our numbers out a bit, and say that 'on average' the usable length of a tree was one hundred feet, and, that this one hundred foot length was two feet by two feet square (after the initial four cants were cut off), say, each tree produced a one hundred by two by two piece of rough lumber (which is about 400 cubic feet). Consider that in many areas of that time, trees were older and larger, and this varied widely over the span of the country, species available for use, etc., etc., but to come up with some sort of numeration, stick with these figures. Ok, if the average railroad tie is five cubic feet, and the tree raw material is trimmed to 400 cubic feet per tree, then that would produce about eighty railroad ties per average tree. And as estimated above, that each mile of track were to use 2640 ties, that would be about thirty three (average) trees per mile. Now the trimmed wood material from those trees would have burned as fuel in some manner, so waste was very minimal.

From east to west, trees were used, of every species, hauled from far away (by horse and wagon) and in other regions the trees were locally available. How many trees were used to build the early railroad? How many trees are used today to maintain the railroad? By early in the 19th century, cresasote and other materials were used to help preserve the wood, make the ties last longer, but figure a railroad tie might have a five, maybe ten year lifespan. When those massive trains roll over the rails, there is a certain amount of force placed on the rails, spread across the ties, minimized when you examine the physics of force, but still, the pins that hold the rails into the wood tie will cause cracks in the wood. And wood cracking as it dries naturally, ties fall apart over time and need to be replaced. Train derailments happen moreso because the railroad ties are old and cracked and cant hold the pins and rails tightly, causing the rail to bow when the train rolls across them. Ouch... So ties have to be replaced periodically, even at five or ten years, that requires a lot of wood! At least with more modern wood preservatives, the goal is to reduce the replacement requirements, still, the railroads require a lot of trees.

But the next time, you take a walk or drive (in your personalized iron-horse), notice the railroad, and ponder the trees used. How many trees, what species, how much wood has been used on our railroads? Think about it, how amazing and fascinating how our trees have been used. Perhaps someone can do some real-life stats on this subject.

And the bottom line is this... trees are a renewable resource, this is very evident as even with the millions of cubic feet used to build and maintain our railroads, plus every other use of trees, we still have plenty more!