Anyone ever burn railroad ties.

Carbon_Liberator said:

ohlongarm said:

A friend of mine has about 5000 railroad ties,they are about 20 years old ,most of the creosote is worn away.These ties are rock solid mostly if not all oak,all very dry,he wants to unload to woodburners,35$ a cord which is solid with no air space.What's your opinions? I don't think it would be good for a cat stove.I cut a segment off one it cut easily and the wood was hard and dry.

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If they are true railroad ties the preservative they pressure treat them with does not "wear" away.
If they are in good shape they would be much more valuable as landscaping ties. They sell for $5 a piece around here.

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+1.

Even if they are treated with creosote, that can *appear* to wear away, but there is still a healthy dose of chemicals in that wood.

My dad accidentally put a 2" x 12" cut-off from a telephone pole in the stove. It got ugly. It looked like the preservative had "worn away" too.

I worked for the railroad for 37 years handling these suckers. You can get severly burned by even being near them on a hot day. Sawdust from cutting them up can do the same thing if it gets under your clothing, and inhaling the fumes and fine sawdust can make for huge health problems. They don’t even make good crib walls in MHO. Work your balls off laying them up and they rot and look like crap in short order.

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Years ago, I was working on a survey crew for a bridge replacement project. The new bridge was supported on wood timber piles. The stupid contractor crew was cutting the tops of the piles to the correct height on a hot day with their shirts off. After being released from the hospital, they were still laid up for a long while with severe burns all over their upper bodies from the sawdust that got on their sweaty skin. Nasty stuff, please don't allow your friend to proceed with his plan.

Another vote for a bad idea.

KodiakII said:

An old friend of the family used to work at a creosote plant in town during the depression. He told us that they used to throw a tie over the fence before the end of shift to take home and burn when they couldn't afford any other form of heat. He said you could always tell the homes that were stealing them by the black soot on the snow by their chimney's.
No don't burn them.

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Why on earth didn't your friend steal the non-croesoted raw timbers? Those suckers would be a nice straight chunk of hardwood and excellent firewood.

Highbeam said:

KodiakII said:

An old friend of the family used to work at a creosote plant in town during the depression. He told us that they used to throw a tie over the fence before the end of shift to take home and burn when they couldn't afford any other form of heat. He said you could always tell the homes that were stealing them by the black soot on the snow by their chimney's.
No don't burn them.

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Why on earth didn't your friend steal the non-croesoted raw timbers? Those suckers would be a nice straight chunk of hardwood and excellent firewood.

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I think it was because they were stacked close to the fence and the untreated ties were down at the other end of the yard...quite a way from the fence. The plant finally closed about twenty years ago, but I remember it as a kid. The smell of it was unbelievable, no wonder most of the guys who worked there died of cancer. We used to drop large rocks from a train bridge that was just down stream from the plant to watch oil slicks come up when the rock hit bottom....nice eh?

Growing up on the farm, we had a railroad that intersected our property. In the early days the railway workers would burn the old ties right o the ROW. The fires would smolder for days on end and stink up our place when the wind was blowing the wrong way. We asked them not to burn them but rather to drop them off at our crossing. We used them for flooring in the barn and for fence posts. My farther had a brain fart to cut some up for firewood but it was some real nasty stuff and my mother set him straight right quick.

ohlongarm said:

Relax gentlemen I've no plans of burning them,my friend was entertaining the idea,but not anymore. Seems like a landscaper wants to grind them into mulch.Don't know what the ramifications of that endeavor may be but it's out of my hands.

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MMMM mmm. Just what I want on my garden. Creosote

Creosote ties are about the best fence posts you can get. One of my corner posts has a date nail in it from "35" and that post is still in great shape.

Received this from a concerned citizen.....who asked that it be put here:

"This is very dangerous , My father once brought home a load of railroad ties to burn for heat. it made so much heat and residue in the chimney that we caught our house on fire. very toxic, very dangerous."