Railroad date nails are small nails with numbers stamped on the head. They are often found in railroad collections and in railroad art. But what were date nails used for? Dan C. talks about date nails and their origin in this article from the March 2006 Sounder.
A 1927 date nail in the Museum’s collection.
I first became aware of date nails when I was working as a fireman for the US Forest Service out of Leavenworth, WA in the mid 70’s. The Great Northern Railroad would regularly start fires along its right of way through Chumstick Canyon. After we had the fire knocked down, the boss would walk the tracks. When I asked what he was looking for, he showed me pieces of steel that had been shed by the brakes and started the fires. He then told me that the fires only started because the ties were so old and dried out. “If the railroad would replace the ties, there would be no more fires.” I asked him how he knew, aside from general appearance, that the ties were old. He showed me small nails that were driven in the tops of the ties on the outside end. He pulled a nail with a 31 on the head out of a tie that burned and gave it to me. The 31 meant the tie had been produced in 1931. I still have that nail, along with a 69 that was the newest one I could find. I threw them in a box and forgot about them for years.
One day, many years later, I was walking through the old Niblock Yard at the Museum and noticed a few of the ties had date nails in them. I regret not taking a pry bar and recovering as many as I could before we tore out the track in the early 90’s. My curiosity piqued, I started asking questions and watching for nails whenever I walked a section of track.
The historical aspects of tie nails, or date nails, are woven into the story of treated crossties. Originally, the rails were secured to stone blocks. In 1832 a shipment of these blocks to the Camden and Amboy RR was delayed. As a temporary fix, the chief engineer had logs spiked perpendicularly under the rails. This was immediately recognized as superior to the stone block method and became common for both new construction and reconstruction of existing lines. By 1838 several railroads were experimenting with tie treatment. Nearly a dozen different chemicals and over a dozen different processes were tried. One of the early treatments of choice was with mercuric chloride. Try getting that past the EPA today! (The stuff is very toxic.)
The oldest and newest date nails in the Museum’s collection: 1910 & 1968. The 1910 nail has recessed numbers, and the 1968 nail has raised numbers.
The earliest use of crossties in the U.S. and Canada consisted of hand hewn locally procured timbers. These ties could be had for about 30 cents apiece at the turn of the century, making the 85 cents per tie cost of treatment pretty unattractive for most railroads. Untreated ties were in common use well into the early part of the twentieth century. A substantial jump in the price of green ties, coupled with the depletion of the supply of superior hardwoods for ties, brought about the widespread use of softwood lumber and treatment processes. The Great Northern began using large numbers of treated ties in 1899, and by 1902 had a permanent facility for producing treated ties in Somers, MT. It is interesting to note that the GN began using date nails in 1899, but the practice was not adopted on the Northern Pacific until 1907. Also of interest is that the Somers plant produced ties that were triangular in cross section, having a twelve inch face and a seven inch depth. The volume of wood in a triangular tie was significantly less than that of a rectangular tie.
The use of date nails became common in the early 1900’s due to the railroads perception that the treated ties were not much longer lived than the untreated ones. While in some cases, an untreated tie was no longer serviceable after two years, the early treatment methods were proven through the use of date nails affixed at the treatment plant to last nine or ten years. Successful, cost-effective treatment using creosote would not come into common use in the US until about 1922-3.
