This was the view from the north end of the 1100 block of S.E. Madison Street on Aug. 8, 2023.
If you were wondering what happens to old wooden railroad ties after they are replaced, here’s one partial clue: They are piled up, at least for a time, in an out-of-the-way corner of the Union Pacific’s Albany yard.
There’s an old railroad track I look at every once in a while when I’m on an otherwise aimless bike ride around Albany. It’s at the end of the 1100 block of Southeast Madison Street, just north of 12th Avenue.
I stopped there the other day, and the photo for this story is the result. As you can see, there’s a big pile of discarded ties in the background.
(This was shot with the digital zoom on my phone. The building in the far background is the Helping Hands shelter, which here looks much closer than it really is.)
The track is what’s left of a former railroad line that shows up on Albany maps from 1916. At that time the line ran toward the northeast past Knox Butte in the direction of Stayton.
By 1945, most of that line had been abandoned, but the track still continued across Hill Street east to Geary Street, where it stopped.
Now the remaining track is sometimes used to store rail cars.
As for what happens to those old ties in the photo after they are stacked there, I wish I knew. They may have to be treated as hazardous waste and disposed of somewhere else, some place far from here. (hh)
“They may have to be treated as hazardous waste and disposed of somewhere else, some place far from here.”
Ya – the “good ole days” of simply burning creosote-soaked ties are long past us (thankfully)…
A question not so much a comment. What is going in, where the Hertz car lot was, behind Costco & next to Lava Car wash?
A Subaru dealership is planned for that site.
Thanks for the information. It is interesting, from the 1916 maps, that the train went to Stayton at one time.