Bisbee daily review., 1907-09-29
RAILROAD TIES IN HUGE
 pIIES
Southern Pacific Has Been Gathering Pine Material Un- til Stock Covers Vast Area In Los Angeles East Side,

LOS ANGELES. Cal. Sept. 2S.- More railroad ties are stored in Los Angeles today than have ever been kept in this city since Ine DesInIIItis of it's development as a railroad center. Over on the East Side there is whole city of ties, stacked in piles varying from one to two stories in heighth, laid out in blocks, with raii- road tracks down the main streets. The Southern Pacific has bought and is still buying millions of pine ties, which it is storing in every available part of it's great yards east of the river. These pine ties will eventually be used to replace all of the redwood on the Hartman lines throughout the southwest.
 Redwood ties are thing of the past and pine ties have been crowned king of the right of way. until somothing
 better shall be found; that may be
 eucalyptus.
 The increased cost of redwood ow-
 ing to the depletion of the northern | Der up to a notch that has made | ties tco great a luxury to be laid by the mile, as in the days of old. The only other wood that the railroads
 could turn to for material was pine,
 and so they commenced more than year ago to order pine ties. Redwood ties were warranted never
 to wear out, but time told a different
 story, and those along the entire right
 of way of the Southern Pacific laid
 over fifteen years ago, will have to be replaced owing to dry rot.
 The officials O. the road saw the need for this change and began to lay
 in a supply in advance. Now they have several million ties on hand and ] more coming with every ship that ar , rives from the north. At first they
 bought them a shipload at time,
 but now that they are away ahead of
 their present need they order only enough so that each vessel can use them as ''6llerH to store between the rest of the cargo This amounts to nearly a trainload every week. When the railroad men found that they would be forced to use pine for ties they commenced to experiment with the wood to see how it would stand the. weather. They found that the pine in it's natural state was a i declusion and a snare, for today it might be hard as iron, and tomorrow might find it split to pieces or in a state of collapse from dry rot The company chemist was turned loose on the problem and told to fig ure out some way to preserve the wood and at the same time keep the cost of the preserved pine tie below the market price of redwood ties. He tried soaking them in crude oil. and dipping them in gar, but found .ihat the first made them too infiammable. and that both were too expensive. A long line of experiments resulted in the discovery that the best thing , to dc with the ties is to soak them in solution of oxide of zinc. This is preventive against inroads by in- sects and the dry rot It also tends to keep the wood from splitting. All of the old railroad men view ed the passing of the redwood tie with joy. They were usually delivered di- rect from the forests ef northern Cali fornia to the road and had to be han
 dled while they were green, or water
 soaked from the voyage down the
 coast and were so heavy that it took
 four men to a tie to move them. Many
 mans feet were crushed by care
 lessly dropping an end too soon or
 to late.
 I The pine ties cannot be dipped in
 the oxide Of zinc solution to any ad-
 vantage until they are dry. It is for
 this reason that the ties are stored
 in the yards. The trees from which
 they are made are cut around Puget Sound and along the Coiumbis river,
 and the ties are put on the ships and lsent south while still green. It takes
 several months for them to dry ont en- ltirely. and the drier they are before
 they are dipped the longer they last.
 They are brought from San Pedro by ithe trainload and dumped in the yards,
 where they are stacked in piles in
 such way as to leave air spaces.
 These piles are laid in regular or.
 der, so many to the block, with alley iways between. Water barrels arc set
 in every alley as protection agains;
 fire. and every section is divided by
 an extra wide alley in which there is
 a track to facilitate the handling of the itses. and so that railroad pumps could be hurried to any section of the yard
 should there be an outbreak of flame There are four separate sections oi the yard in which ties are stored, and the total area Is more than thirty acres.
 II If all the ties that are in these sec lions were stacked into one heap il