Salt Lake Telegram | 1907-03-05 | Page 12 | To Kill Noise of Railroad Trains

TO KILL NOISE OF RAILROAD TRAINS. It looks as though the day of the wooden tie for railroads is about passed. The use of iron ties is already al-ready very considerable in Mexico, South Africa and India, because of the bugs that destroy wooden rails in tropical countries. ! There is a species of wood ant in India that take to wooden ties with the same cheerfulness that the old goat tackles a pack of cards. But now a new steel tie has been invented by one John C. Snyder. He was a commercial traveler and was kept awake so many nights on the railroad that he set his head to work to produce a tie which would stop the clamor of the train. It is described as a "steel case or shell, filled with a composition of asphaltum and stone. At the bottom the steel shell does not close down, the asphaltum is allowed to rest upon the ground. It is this that furnishes a resilience which reduces the noise of the rolling stock to practically nothing. To these ties the rails are fastened by steel , clamps, instead of spikes, which preclude all possibility possi-bility of the rails spreading." Wooden ties cost from 65 cents to $1.90, according accord-ing to the timber used. Their average life is three and one-half years. The Snyder steel and asphaltum tie costs from $2 to $2.75, but its minimum life is guaranteed at twenty-live years. It is claimed that the new tie prevents practically practi-cally all noise, and a roadbed so constructed has been thoroughly tested by experiments on the Pennsylvania Pennsyl-vania and Central New Jersey, the New York Central Cen-tral and other great systems. With these ties and electric or gasoline engines the passing of a railroad train will hardly be noticed, and it will be a great relief to many people who are weary of their everlasting clamor.