Painted trestles?

[Capt Bob Johnson]

Tom, as a wild conjecture, rather than red lead primer, could it have been copper bottom paint which was used to protect from borers and orginisms on wooden hulls and retard growth of grass and barnacles on steel hulls? I'm thinking they could have tried copper bottom paint to combat termites?

[ttrigg]

Ray;

The desert floor along the US Mexico boarder has a lot of very low grade iron ore dust. A combination of this dust blown onto the timbers, combined with years of hot dry weather will cause the timbers to take on a rusty hue. Take a drive up to San Onefre power plant. There is a Timber Trestle bridge at the beach that has a deep golden brown color. "Salt air" and a lack of rainfall with lots of bright sun have caused the "color shift". The other bridges along the coast route have been re-coated in the last 5 (or so) years and have the "black creosote color." Given the right weather conditions and age, creosote can be black, brown, rusty, tan, or gray. Also just prior to W.W.II the ship yards had an overabundance of red lead ship paint and some of that was sold off to the county & RR's. Red and brown lead paint was used in the 40's to protect timbers from the destructive powers of UV. The lead paint also provided some "fire retardance", so what you have seen in the tunnels may just be lead fire retardant paint, an attempt to protect the tunnel from embers from the fire box.

[Ray Dunakin]

How common is it for a wooden trestle to be painted? Most of the trestles in the Carrizo Gorge area, on the San Diego and Arizona railroad, are painted a dull brownish red. (It's very old and faded now so I'm not sure how it might have looked new.) I haven't seen many wooden trestles on other railroads, but the few I've seen were not painted -- as far as I can tell they were creosote treated.

Also, what would be the reason for painting as opposed to treating with creosote? (I'm assuming the paint was not applied over creosote.)

I've noticed that the tunnels there also have painted timbers. The timbers at the entrance of the tunnels are completely painted, and inside the tunnel only about two feet at the bottom of each timber has paint.