Railway Track & Structures - October 2007 - (Page 30)

RTS1007 p25-36-Crossties 9/26/07 2:28 PM Page 30 L.B. Foster’s concrete ties lead to an ethanol facility in Washington State. upgrade their track to handle larger and heavier freight cars. Koppers supplies all levels of the railroad market with ties, but Niederberger notes that the shortline market has shown significant growth, due in part to the current federal tax credit legislation. Another point noted by Niederberger isn’t how many ties have been ordered, but how the ties are being transported. “It seems a number of railroads are moving material more and more by using unit trains,” said Niederberger. “At our plants, this involves both inbound and outbound movements of material and requires excellent communication between both the supplier and the railroad to hit the benchmark car turn goals. “The wood crosstie industry has done a remarkable job of adjusting its resources and capacities to meet the recent growth in demand. Over the past 18-24 months, the sawmill industry has ratcheted up production to the point that the supply of green ties is now relatively in sync with demand. In addition, the treating industry continues to spend the necessary CAPEX to add capacity to meet the new higher level of demand,” said Niederberger. Tangent Rail Corporation manufactures pressure-treated wood crossties, switch ties and other treated-wood products. The company added a borate pretreatment for ties going to Norfolk Southern at Tangent’s Warrior, Ala., plant. “The borate/creosote dual treatment has proven to be effective in adding service life to treated-wood crossties installed in areas where ties have had premature failure due to rot and decay. Other railroads are looking into the dual treatment for the same reason,” said George Caric, vice president business development of Tangent Rail and current RTA president. Caric points out that, although the price of creosote has doubled in the past year, Tangent Rail is seeing a strong commercial demand from shortlines, new ethanol plants being built and coal mines now wanting to put in track to ship coal by unit train. “We are continuing to work with any industry that can benefit from making process steam and power from used treated-wood crossties. Our Tangent Rail Services Division processes whole used crossties into Crosstie Derived Fuel. This fuel has an excellent Btu value and, as our country continues to wean itself off of foreign oil, we feel this fuel is a viable alternative. If we can get more strategic permitted locations burning this material, it would be very beneficial to our industry, especially the Class 1 railroads that are replacing 16 million ties annually,” said Caric. Thompson Industries, Inc., provides the rail industry with treated crossties, switch ties, crossing timbers, bridge ties and timbers, special timbers, crosstie preplating and custom wood treating. Thompson is also an approved treater and distributor of Weyerhaeuser Corporation’s structural composite railroad timber products, called Parallam® PSL. In addition to using AWPA P2 and P3 creosote solutions, Thompson is currently investigating additional types of wood preservatives and wood preservative systems for use in treating crossties and other wooden track products. “While creosote has and continues to b t t a a k B a r i p n h o t t d o A t a s h H a a t o B g o m r p e d 30 Railway Track & Structures October 2007 www.rtands.com w http://www.rtands.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Railway Track & Structures - October 2007

Railway Track & Structures - October 2007 Contents On Track Industry Today Supplier News AREMA News NRC News TTCI R&D Crossties by the Billions Provide Essentials for Full Support Modern Tools Manage Risk M/W Challenges: Better Management of Thermal Forces in CWR TTCI Celebrates 25 Years as Facility, 10 as Part of AAR Products and Literature People Calendar Sales Representatives Website Directory Advertisers Index Professional Directory Classified Advertising Chicago Perspective

Railway Track & Structures - October 2007

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