How to make Railroad ties last longer?

[MossRoad]

Built a small porch with real creosote oozing 4 railroad tie posts.

For 30 years they looked fine and then moving a refrigerator the fount that termites had completely hollowed out the ties from the inside.

The outside 3/4 to 1.5” perfect but nothing inside except very upset termites…

Similar thing happened to my dad. He built a nice patio area with crushed limestone looking out over the yard. There were 3 steps from the grass up to the patio that were about 24' wide each with about a foot of crushed limestone behind the ties. The ends were retaining walls made of broken sidewalk concrete that resembled stone.

Anyhow, the ties were solid as a rock until one day they weren't. Someone stepped through one. Dad inspected, and all were hollow from termites. He replaced them with concrete.

 

[newbury]

If you are talking "real" RR ties - they should last forever with no added help. I have four - serving to hold up two gates. Installed in 1982 and still solid as a rock.

If you are talking about the crap sold at you local hardware store. Well - you are going to get exactly what you pay for.

Your climate is far different than the humid southeast US.

 

[BlueKnife]

I was wondering the same thing. Sound very AI generated huh? Their other post sounds the same. Very interesting if AI is going to start jumping into the mix.

Yeah, either she is a bot or she just copy and pasted an AI response.