New Ties (Railroad Kookery)

I can't believe it's been nearly three years since that parade of equipment came through on the Canadian National tracks, removing old scrap railroad ties from the right-of-way. Seems like only yesterday.

Yesterday, the same parade came through, only this time it wasn't taking away ties, it was tossing piles of new ones along the right-of-way.

I took a few photos as the crew worked. Click on the image below to see the whole set.



New railroad ties smell pretty awful — I'm guessing it's the creosote used to preserve them? — and the whole neighborhood smelled that way after these guys got through. At night came a storm with heavy rain, which helped a little.

Anyway, I expect we'll soon be seeing more work on the tracks, as old ties are taken out and these new ties put in. This sheds a new light on some work that took place early this spring, when bulldozers and other equipment showed up and removed a giant pile of scrap ties that had been sitting at the bend of Ainsworth Road since I moved here in 1990. At the time I thought they were being nice, cleaning up after themselves. Now I expect they were just making room for a new giant pile of scrap ties.