Early railroads The first railroads in the
United States were constructed in the early 1830s. These railroads mounted track made of strips of iron secured to wood stringers onto stone blocks. The first recorded use of wood railroad ties is in 1832 when Robert Stevens, president of the
Camden and Amboy Railroad in
New Jersey substituted wood ties for stone due to slow deliveries of stone ties from
Sing Sing prison in New York. Hewn wood crossties caught on quickly and were cut from trees along the railroad
right-of-way. Tie hackers used a crosssaw and a broadaxe to hand hew railroad ties until they were phased out by
sawmills by the early 1940s. The advent of
steam power and then
gasoline engines allowed sawmills to operate efficiently and on site as needed making tie hacking obsolete over time.
Pressure treatment The crosstie industry began to employ
pressure treating as a means of prolonging tie life beginning in the mid-1800s. The first crossties were treated in 1838 with an infusion of bichloride of mercury and laid on the Northern Central railroad in Maryland. The first permanent treating facility began operations in 1848 in
Lowell, Massachusetts using alternately
bichloride of mercury and
chloride of zinc. Tie treatments continue to evolve today with new research and methods. Railroad and aviation engineer
Octave Chanute, who was instrumental in the use of preservatives for ties, is credited with the introduction of the
date nail to keep track of the life of treated railroad ties in track.
The Tie Industry Railroad development kept pace with the expanding frontier in the United States after the
American Civil War, creating a burgeoning need for new railroad ties. Every mile of track required about 2,500-3,500 crossties.
Trains became heavier and faster and the railroads found it was less expensive to add more ties per mile than to buy heavier rail. During
World War I, President
Woodrow Wilson created the
United States Railroad Administration to support the financially weak railroad industry. The USRA took control of pricing and standardization of crosstie sizes. Following World War I, tie demand contracted as railroads consolidated lines, used more preserved wood ties, and the
Great Depression caused railroads to become bankrupt. John W. Fristoe was the first president. In his inaugural speech he stated, "I hope that you gentlemen will succeed in forming your organization; that when it is formed, the first effort you make will be to develop economies; not how to get more for your stock, but how to produce it for less. How to pay your labor well, how they may derive a part of it...We have got to get down to the simplest form of business in which the producer comes closest to the consumer, and in that way wipe out unnecessary expenses." The Association still values these same ideals. The name was changed on July 26, 1932 to The Railway Tie Association. ==Committees==