With all of the pine beetle killed trees here in Colorado, can someone tell me the feasibility of using these for railroad ties. The railroads used local trees when they were first building the lines. I have been told that many of the trees are lodgepole pines around Dillon, however, in the Buena Vista area, a lot of ponderosa pines were killed. How well do ponderosa ties hold up as ties? If this is a possibility, I wonder why no one has pursued the idea, and with the Colorado prison inmate population, it may be a way to use the correctional industries to furnish the labor at a reasonable cost. Ken in Buena Vista