The old posts remind me of some pleasant memories. I was on the board when RGRPC was getting started. My 40 year railroad career included many things, but maintenance of way was never one of them. So logically the RGRPC asked me to look after MOW. Time for a 60 year old to learn a new skill.
But I had some good teachers in Mike Kenyon, Jim Ozment, Max Pacheco and Mad Dog Collins. Mike and Jim were an interesting pair. Mike was a PE, Jim came up through the school of hard knocks. Both hired out on the DRGW on the same day, became division engineers, and retired the same day. Max had held the C&TS track together for many years despite few resources, and was the very first employee hired by RGRPC. And Mad Dog Collins was well named. Mad Dog had all the tact of a bulldozer, made his share of enemies, but if I ever need track work done under difficult conditions I'll go looking for Mad Dog.
Now to ties. For some reason ties always get a lot of attention from the sidewalk superintendents. But the experts seemed, like Carlos, more worried about track geometry...line,surface and kinked curves. Okay, that was the top item on a long list that included ties along with a lot of other things.
For what it's worth, Mike Davis another former DRGW MOW guy and colleague of Mike and Jim, calculated from Commission records that between 1977 and 1999, 57,112 ties were installed by the C&TS.
Mike recommended an assumption of a 50 year tie life (arid conditions/light loads) and calculated an annual replacement rate of 3600. In addition, based on his inspection of the line back in 1999, about 13-14 percent of the ties were failed, which implied a "catch up" need of about 24,000 ties. I wonder how much has changed.
For those interested in MOW, there are some interesting reports by some knowledgeable folks buried in the Commission files.
JBW
