Wooden Block Roundhouse Floors

[Dough]

It seems like all of the old factories and roundhouses had wood floors.  It looks like 4x6's turned on end so that they tough end grain is up.  You can also see in one of the pics how deep they go.  Does anybody know how they did this?  Did they just grade the floor and butt them together?  One of the images appears to have little wedges, but I don't know if that is just a century's worth of cinders and grime.

Also what kind of wood might they have used?  It almost looks like creosote treated pine...which i guess was readily available.  But then again that second pic kind of makes it look like something black was just poured over them.

[Modelcar]

.....Can't answer how it was done but it must have been wide spread in use.  Our half mile long plant here had quite a bit of it used in the assembly area and aisles in our plant.  I'd suggest the block was placed on leveled sand and then as it was installed...I might suggest it was secured possibly with sand between the joints.

This type of floor seemed to last a long time and was subjected to heavy loads in our plant....Most of it was eventially replaced with concrete as renovation was accomplished.

[desertdog]

.....Can't answer how it was done but it must have been wide spread in use.  Our half mile long plant here had quite a bit of it used in the assembly area and aisles in our plant.  I'd suggest the block was placed on leveled sand and then as it was installed...I might suggest it was secured possibly with sand between the joints.

This type of floor seemed to last a long time and was subjected to heavy loads in our plant....Most of it was eventially replaced with concrete as renovation was accomplished.

We had wooden block floors in the heat treatment department of a factory that I worked at while in college.  The blocks were treated with creosote and were just wedged together side by side.  My foreman told me they withstood heavy weights better than concrete because they could flex under heavy loads.

 

John Timm

[Dough]

Thanks for the responses, and yes they really do seem to hold up well.  I also heard that they are easier on the legs/knees than concrete.  Did either of you notice that?

[CShaveRR]

I suppose it would be hard to notice any differences unless you'd worked on one surface for a long time, then switched to the other.

Talk about supporting heavy loads, though--the EMD assembly floor in McCook had this composition.  It was built in the mid-1930s, IIRC.  I'm sure that, when the building was demolished, this was easier to get rid of than concrete slabs would have been.

[Modelcar]

....I really can't comment how it was to work on as in my area of the plant...{engineering lab}, we had concrete floors.  It was in a newer part of the building.

Carl, if you see this, you drove by the long plant {on your left}, on the western side of Muncie when you and Pat were leaving the evening you stopped by here at our depot.

[tatans]

Many streets were "paved" with wooden blocks, I'm sure every town and city had some, many years back, we had some in our town and they were paved over with asphalt I imagine they are still under the pavement,  spring floods actually made some of the blocks float away.

[RABEL]

Those floors absorbed machinery vibrations. They were also used in multi story

concrete floored manufacturing plants. I've seen them  in the IH and Link Belt

plants of Chicago many years ago.

[greyhounds]

I remember touring the Cat factory in E. Peoria many years ago in my long gone youth.

The factory had those wooden floors and the tour guide explained why.  I whish I could remember more, but all I recall is that wood blocks made the best factory floors for a number of reasons.

[miniwyo]

If you notice that when you walk on it it feels better then a concrete floor under your feet, and the end grain of the wood is the strongest part of the wood, hence the reason chopping blocks are used endgrain up. Thus making it stronger than concrete under heavier loads as was mentioned before. At Union Station in Ogden they have an RPO that has this same type of floor in the sorting room. 

[JonathanS]

In addition to the reasons given by others. 

Wooden block floors don't damage dropped tools or parts like concrete or brick floors can. 

Wooden block floors absorb oil and water spills reducing the chance of slipping as compared to a concrete floor.

Wooden block floors are easily repaired or modified.

 

[SALfan]

Don't have any clinical evidence about humans, but I've read that hogs raised on slatted concrete floors (for drainage) have a higher incidence of sore feet than hogs raised on dirt.  Sounds plausible, anyway.

[DSO17]

     A modern objection to wood block floors is that the end grain soaks up hazardous liquids spilled on them. A large shop building I am familiar with has had all the wood blocks torn out and replaced with poured concrete, which was then coated with a sealer so nasty spills could be cleaned up and properly disposed of. It looked like the wood blocks were set in a thin bed of sand when they were originally installed. Don't know what kind of wood it was.