i hope it is better material than the original recycled stuff used to make an alternative to exterior lumber for decking, stairs etc. everyone i know who used that junk eventually tore it out and threw it away.
grizlump
Interesting idea....maybe with the addition of certain dyes you could have
Colored ties.
underworld
Two starnge things often seem to mess with developments like this.
1. The recycled material value goes up so that it ceases to have cost advantages - or much easier to achieve recycling uses swallow up the available material.
2. Directly or indirectly related there is an unforeseen hiccup in the new use. The best example I can think of here was the "revolutionary" introduction of plastic troughing (conduit) for the lineside electric cables to replace the heavy concrete troughs. the new ones were marvelously light, easy to carry to site... erm easy to carry from site to sell as scrap... and the concrte lids made a real racket when walked on/lifted off - so the new (silent) plastic was brilliant for stealing the cables... Now we only get the plastic in limited locations and it has to have steel clips and even long steel locking bars to keep it in place and secure the cables. (Cable theft drops off once fibre optics are used as they have no scrap value).
You just never know what weird problems will arise. The early insulated (on the ground) cables that replaced the overhead open copper wires suffered from rats eating the insulation. They put in stuff the rats didn't like the taste of... laid the cable out into the country and the squirrels loved it...
Necessity is the mother of invention - or something like that.
CTA, the rapid transit operator in Chicago, uses recycled plastic ties on much of its at-grade track. This is not resrticted to tangent track; long curve at Nagle Avenue on the Blue Line (line to O'Hare) was relaid with plastic ties several years ago. Empty car weights are in the range of 54-56,000 pounds, with trains of up to 8-cars operated on some lines. Hope this helps! Art
Over the past several decades there have been quite a few attempts to develop railroad ties made from recycled and composite materials, ranging from wood chips (sometimes from old ties), plastic, rubber, and whatever. A number of designs have even been advanced to the point where a handful have been installed for testing in real world conditions. I have not heard of any getting beyond the prototype test stage, although I am no longer in touch with current developments.
In general, though, the railroads tend to be very cautious about adopting radical new materials or designs. More than once a great new idea cratered with unexpected problems a year or two later. Possibly the problems can be overcome with further tweaking of the design, but more often by then the promoting company has exhausted its speculative capital and the investors have soured on the concept.
You will probably find several railroads have experimented with the ties, but in only one or two very short sections probably interspersed with conventional ties as insurance. Sometimes the FAST testing facility in Colorado will test this sort of product too.
John
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3718/is_200504/ai_n13636850/
Just saw a short bit on Science Channel's Factory Made, covering the manufacture of railroad ties from recycled rubber tires and high-density plastic. The result looked not unlike the traditional black plastic ties found under the rails of flex track.
My question, not answered by the TV presentation, is - Who uses these black semi-flexible ties?
Factory Made is a spinoff of How It's Made, so I suspect the end user is in Canada. Beyond that, I don't have a clue, nor is that assumption guaranteed to be valid.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - on white plastic ties pretending to be concrete)