Used these untreated yellow railroad ties to make a small retaining wall 30 years ago. Do not know how long they had been used under the railway steel before that. After taking the wall apart, I started to cut them up into 2 foot blocks to make it easier to move to the pickup and take to the land fill. The wood, on a whole, turned out to be fairly sound with the dryer sections having a moisture content of about 18%. Which is surprising considering that the wood had been partially buried for 30 years. So these splits went into the wood shed. It was a novel experience to split with a maul again. I have not done that for years!