This shows the fate of worn-out railroad rails. I was able to tour a railroad recycling operation earlier this year, thanks to Ed Kravitz (see his Web site: www.piraterail.com).

The pile on the left is rail steel, sheared into two foot lengths. I was told that the steel mills pay more per ton for them than full-length rails (39 feet if jointed rail, or whatever lengths it was cut into if it was welded rail). The two foot lengths are easier to handle and to load into the furnaces.

In the background you can see a huge pile of ties. Some of these are good enough to be reused; some are sold for landscaping; the rest are either ground up or burned for fuel. There has been some investigation done on extracting methanol from old ties, to be used in making synthetic gasoline.