Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1914 — TREAT TIES WITH OIL [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TREAT TIES WITH OIL

METHOD CONSIDERABLY LENGTHENS THEIR LIVES. Idea Is Comparatively a New One, But , .*•»*** ■. It Has Amply Demonstrated Its Value—Giafit Bathtubs Used in the . Process. At Twenty-third street and the Blue river is a busy little industrial electric railway. It is quite unknown to Kansas City, says the Star, save as seen from car windows of passing steam trains, yet it operates over a narrow-gauge trackage of six and onehalf tniles. The trackage is in the yards of a creosoting company which was built to take care of a single contract. Its sole function is to give a creosote bath to the railroad ties on two divisions of a great western railroad system. Last year 1,213,000 ties were treated. It is estimated that the process doubles and even triples the tie’s term of service. Thus the process is not only a great railroad economy, but a part of the nation-wide for timber conservation. There are two bathtubs at the' creo-

sote bathing plant and there Is nothing quite like them in Kansas City. The tubs, for instance, are 130 feet long and eight feet in diameter and hold a small railroad train. The narrow gauge tracks, over which the electric locomotive operates, extend through each of the bathtubs or giant retorts. A train of trucks loaded eight feet high with ties is run into the retort. The locomotive pulls a.way and the five-ton doors to the retort, or bathtub, are closed and bolted airtight with a great circle of screw bolts. The" train- of ties then is deluged with the oil. The pressure pumps are started and at the end of two or three hofirs three and one-third gallons of oil has been forced into each tie. The oil then is drained off. An 80 per cent, vacuum subsequently is created and for a. period of one and one-half hours .the vacuum sucks oil from the tie, until it is left impregnated with about two and -a half gallons of the oil which is to act as an antiseptic against timber destroyiiig fungi. Between 870 and 1,060 ties are treated at one bathing. There are now about a hundred timber preserving plants in America, mostly in the timber regions. The larger per cent of jthe oil used is im-ported-from England. It is obtained in a coal-precess.

Opening Up One of Two Huge Bath Tubs That Hold Railroad Ties at Creosoting Plant. The Tub Weighs Five Tons.