Last week I was doing some work at a local railroad museum and glanced at a log car that had been fully restored in 2001. Untreated timbers had been used. One end is almost completely rotted away and a lot of the other timbers are failing. While untreated timber may be historically accurate they are a poor choice for long term preservation.

There has been a lot of discussion about painting historical wooden cars, but I don't recall much discussion about having the wood preserved by preservative treatment. So I am curious about what would be the ideal treatment and the ideal lumber species. Being that those two factors are closely related with each other, I wonder if the ideal treated lumber would be ideal for holding paint and resisting water that might cause checking or warping.

It seems to me that there has been a lot of historical replication of wooden car frames and composite car trucks that has been done with untreated lumber and timber.

I'm with Ron on his question. What has been used with good success? Left to my own devices for flat car decking I'd look at:

A. Pressure treated rated for ground contact, then fully cured before installation. Maybe use closed cell polyethylene sill gasket between the wood and steel and stainless fasteners to avoid potential corrosion problems from the chemicals in treated lumber nowadays.

B. Hardwood with a good sealer on all sides and ends.

In reality, wood decks got a lot of abuse and were constantly repaired/replaced as a cost of doing business. Ours wouldn't get that abuse and need to last a lot longer than they would in service.

I think the two questions which must be addressed before undertaking a "restoration" are: what is the best thing we can do for this car/locomotive? and what is the best thing this car/locomotive can do for us? Hopefully the answers to those questions guide our treatment of the object.

The fundamental problem with "restoring" a wooden car is that we cannot restore wood. We replace it. And, it is the nature of wood to weaken and decay. So, if our goal is to recreate the car in its original form with material like the original material, maybe we just have to acknowledge that we need to replace the wood periodically. I think we need to admit that, in doing this, we are moving in the direction of creating a replica.

On the other hand, if we determine that the best thing the car/locomotive can do for us is to operate and perform a function beyond looking good, maybe we can accept "non-authentic" materials. In some cases, maybe we even need to tweak the design a bit. But, let's not pretend that it's a restoration. It's a facsimile--true, a facsimile with a history.

And, in some cases, with a truly significant historic piece, maybe the best thing we can do is preserve the item as we find it, document it fully, do our best to protect and preserve it, and figure out a way to let it tell its story, patches, repairs, rot, scars and all. Certainly, at some point in time the custodian will sweep what is left of it out the door. I'm sad for this. But, "restoring" it would destroy the original just as surely.

As we learned at the Western Railway Museum, the only answer to preserving any wooden artifact is to store it indoors (or at the very least under a good roof).

Our "poster child" for teaching this lesson is our wooden Pacific Fruit Express refrigerator car. PFE ran that car through their shops before they gave it to us, and it was beautiful. Unfortunately, we had no covered storage, so the car sat outside for many years and now it looks terrible -- rotten wood, peeled paint, etc.. We now store it indoors, but the damage is done.

A friend taught wood products pathology and preservation at U.C. Berkeley for many years. His succinct answer when people asked how to preserve wood was "keep it dry!" I would add "avoid temperature fluctuations" and "avoid exposure to ultraviolet radiation (sunlight)".

There is no species of wood (including both species of redwood) which is immune to decay and weather damage. Money and volunteer time are much better spent building storage facilities than "keeping nature at bay."

And where is there any integrity in misrepresenting what they did in the past for longevity of the display? At what point is the story of what materials they had to work with become important? I love the comment we ordered the fake rivet heads and will weld them on. It reminds me of a street entertainer playing a shell game to get your money. We claim we did things historic but we used modern techniques and just tried to make it look old.

Further thing just to wear out and the life of an object will have to be extended over time by some renewal process, What we choose says a lot about our dedication to preservation or just playing with trains.

Robby Peartree

What was common timber in the era in which wooden cars were built is not easily available if at all today. We're usually faced with no option other than to compromise. Old growth now means about 20-25 years........

So as not to hijack the thread and get into another debate on preserving the historic fabric.... In my case, we have a 52' flat that will need to be re-decked. It was built specifically as a boom idler in 1929 and modified extensively by it's owners over the years right down to 70T roller bearing trucks. Our intended use for it is to remain as a functioning idler, hence we will "restore" it to serviceable condition, aka perform the usual required maintenance including a new deck, appropriate paint colors and mechanical work so it can perform its intended function. In our case, you could say that "preservation" applies in that we're preserving its original function.

Soooo, the question remains: What materials have been used for the best longevity? Or am I close with my guesses a few posts up?

Thanks in advance,

The material used when pressure treating wood will attack steel fasteners...

As suggested by others... the best practice is to store the car inside.

Failing that... paint it... if for a flat car deck, use a deck oil, and reapply with some regularity.... (annually?)

The best of the available woods is likely Douglas fir, called "Oregon pine" in the 19th century... but like redwood the best of it was old growth and the currently available material is not...

At Ardenwood (SPCRR) we treated bolt holes, particularly vertical bolt holes in wooden sills and beams by saturating them with an epoxy, the same material we used to consolidate a rotting timber. It would seal and weather proof the wood, consolidate any damage or seal checks, but also was itself toxic to the fungus that causes wood rot.

Like so many things we do, if your goal is preservation, restore as well you can following the original techniques, using original materials, only substituting when forced by non-availability... Resist the idea of "improving" or modernizing... If fixing something for operation... then upgrade as seems reasonable and economically appropriate... just don'
t represent your work as "preservation"... instead as "adaptive reuse"

Randy

Something that has not been mentioned here is skills preservation. Knowing that any wood outdoors, even hard woods like white oak, will need replacement in time, then it will be an important thing to have people who know how to do the work.

Back at Railfair 1999, I watched a crew built a new body for a wooden flat car. the crowds gathered around to watch the process. Today the Sacramento Northern flat car is in Car Barn Three at Rio Vista. It is in good condition 19 years later. And yes, we still need to paint that ice reefer mentioned above.

Historic fabric will have to change in any artifact that is outdoors. I worked in maritime preservation for 40 years. We documented what we did and replaced in kind everything that we did. A few ships are indoors, but like trains most of them live out in the open. Thus the artfacts will be rebuilt or disappear. I prefer to have a rebuilt artifact than not have it at all.

Ted Miles

While reading this thread a thought/question came to me:

What was the expectation of the original logging operation? When using natural (untreated) wood what were its expectations for the life of the object? Did it expect to replace the timbers every so many years and considered this as a maintenance cost of doing business; the real value was in the trucks, brakes, and metal parts.

Do we as preservationists expect the same thing? Or do we want to preserve for a life of, say, ten times the original expected life. What compromises do we take to achieve the longer life?

The car I mentioned is a single disconnected log truck built about 1910. When in logging service the wood was probably pounded to pieces before it rotted. Replacement would have been part of the cost of doing busyness. All that was left by 2000 was the metal parts. In a museum context the money and manpower to do a restoration are hard to come by so the work needs to last as long as possible. This truck sets outside right in front of the depot so is very visible to the public.

Ted (Miles) wrote...



That was a project envisioned and lead by myself, and a now gone friend, Nate Suggars... It was one of several projects, all trying to do restoration/rehabilitation, in real time, as a public event... Doing a restoration in "real time" required that the restoration report and artifact documentation be done before...

We had done a smaller project before, replication of a narrow gauge four-wheel flat car, at Ardenwood Farm for the SPCRR... We would do it again, again at Ardenwood, this time with narrow gauge historian, modeler and documentary film maker Boone Morrison, for a video "The Birth of California Narrow Gauge", including the reconstruction of a West Side Lumber Co flat car. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpxjg34gJV0

Randy

Well, at one time I restored a Plymouth loco from 1920ish. The loco was basically constructed of cast iron (frames), Steel (running gear and cab frame), wood (engine "hood") and "sheet iron" (exterior skin).

Sheet iron was an early form of sheet metal, it has a unique property that causes it to form a protective "iron oxide" layer that slows the rusting of the iron.

In the year 2005 nobody was making "sheet iron", in fact nobody made it for probably 50 years.

So I substituted "pressure treated lumber" (so the wood does not rot) and "galvanized" sheet steel (readily available and somewhat rust free).

Does it match the "original fabric" ? No. Will it last for a couple of years "inside" ? Hopefully.

Railroading has always been an "outside activity", some materials will last longer than others. When labor was inexpensive it made sense to "re-deck" a flatcar with fresh lumber every decade (or so). Now, with labor being expensive using a longer lasting material makes some sense.

Cheers, Kevin.

What about apitong lumber for flatcar decking?

10 of the strongest woods in the world https://www.hitchcockandking.co.uk/h-k-news/top-10-hardest-woods-world/

Robert