The entry to our church starts at the street. A little gate leads to a sidewalk that is flanked with railroad ties. As you can see, they have been there a long time and have started to rot. I had no doubt that we would ultimately remove these railroad ties and replace them with plants, but it was not high on the priority list. Then two things happened: First, I noticed that they were harboring carpenter ants, which can threaten our little 1929 wooden church; Second, I actually started reading about how caustic railroad ties really are. They are really really really bad for the soil, people, and animals.
Just in case you were unaware, let me share just a little information about railroad ties...
The chemicals that railroad ties are treated with can pose a problem. . . . One common treatment is creosote, an insecticide, sporicide, miticide and fungicide that penetrates deeply into pressure-treated wood for a long time. If the railroad ties are old, creosote may ooze out, leeching the soil and killing plants, insects and small animals. Creosote also pollutes the local watershed and can be dangerous to health with prolonged or frequent contact. Wood oozing creosote should be disposed of immediately as municipal solid waste. Railroad ties coated in creosote are not intended for use in landscaping and should not be used. . . . Read more here.
As a result of these discoveries, we moved the removal of the railroad ties to the top of the priority list. We started with the six ties flanking the front walkway.
Here are the tools I used: a crowbar, a trenching shovel, a hatchet, and a splitting maul.
I used the crowbar to loosen the ties and pry them up out of the dirt. It was a little tricky because it appears the ties were used as formwork for the concrete sidewalk and were pretty well wedged underneath a lip of concrete. Also, these railroad ties are really really heavy, so lifting them out is not really an option, especially the longer ties. But with some elbow grease and Patrick's help, we were able to remove the first couple of ties--short ones near the church steps.
We knew that the longer railroad ties were going to be even tougher to remove. This is where the splitting maul came in handy.
If you have some unexpressed anger or frustrations, this is the job for you.
We literally beat the logs into submission with the splitting maul and removed them in pieces. This job would have been more satisfying if it was not so gross. Once the insides of the ties were exposed, the smell of creosote was overwhelming. And the oil was visible in the wood and sand surrounding the ties. We also uncovered a colony of carpenter ants, which added some excitement to the project. Those little suckers bite! Despite slapping at our arms and adding ant poison to the already caustic wood, we forged ahead. Ultimately, we removed all the logs. Hurray!
After the ties and contaminated soil were removed, we loaded the railroad tie pieces into the minion (our island truck) and took them to the dump. We immediately planted some lavender bushes in their place, and already, it looked much much better. See?
After the lavender bushes were planted, we created a gravel pathway for yard access. We also filled on the spaces between the bushes with succulents.
Our goal is to encourage the succulents and the lavender to spread and fill in the spaces so our front walkway will be filled with color all year round. Until then, we are enjoying this drastic improvement in our front entrance. Before and after below:
