Watco Tests Composite Ties

Watco Locomotives/ photo by David C. Lester

PITTSBURG, Kan. Watco announced in its recent employee magazine, The Dispatch, that it is conducting a series of tests on composite ties at several locations.

Last week, we reported on the installation of 12,250 composite ties made from recycled plastic by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. You can read that article here. The Watco report is below.

Watco has begun a pilot project with composite ties on three of its short lines and the railroad believes this could have a profound impact on the company’s sustainability efforts during the coming years.

The Fox Valley and Lake Superior Rail System (FOXY), Louisiana Southern Railroad (LAS), and Mississippi Southern Railroad (MSR) were selected to install about 1,000 composite railroad ties. These railroads were selected because they operate in extreme weather conditions and on track that includes curves, bridge approaches, joints, crossings, and switches, all within a small geographic footprint.

The Watco team selected three composite tie vendors for the pilot, and each railroad will install ties from multiple vendors. This will allow Watco to see how each company’s product performs in a variety of environments and help them decide which are best for each track structure.

“Louisiana and Mississippi are high-decay zones for wood ties. The water and heat make them rot especially fast,” said Will Long, director of rail network solutions. “Then, there’s the cold in Wisconsin. We’ll be able to see how all three products perform in extreme environments and in a variety of applications.”

Composite ties offer several benefits. First is sustainability. Each tie contains about 180 pounds of recycled plastics. They’re expected to last up to 50 years, which is two to three times longer than the average lifespan of traditional wood ties. If they perform well in areas where wood ties are prone to rot, that means safer, more stable track for trains and fewer tie replacements for Maintenance of Way (MOW) teams. When they do need to be replaced, the ties can be recycled again and go back onto a railroad. They do cost a bit more up front, though.

The FOXY was the first to complete their installation in early September. Roadmaster Rick Grant says it went well for their first experience with the new ties, but there were a couple of concerns. “You have to pre-drill the holes for the spikes which can be difficult since we have different sizes of rail. And there are special plugs you use in those holes when we repair rail, which is different from the traditional wood plugs,” Grant said. “But I’ve walked all the locations where we installed ties and we’ve been running trains over them. Everything looks good and it went very well. I can’t wait to see how they hold up to a Wisconsin winter.”

The MSR and LAS expect to install their ties by the end of the year. Then, all three railroads’ MOW teams will monitor how the new ties perform compared to wooden ties over the next year or so.

“This is just the beginning,” Long said. “Once we know how they perform and where they perform best, we’ll decide when and where we want to move forward with which vendor. We’re hoping these ties hold up to challenging environmental conditions. Each tie we install keeps plastic out of landfills and can help make our railroads safer.