Clear red oak (Quercus rubra) blocks were used to evaluate various types of accelerated aging tests including boil, steaming, and cyclic weathering. It was found that the repeated vacuum and pressure treatment of wood in water, steaming, oven-dry, and freezing appeared to be most effective in reducing the MOE in compression and hardness modules of wood specimens. Red oak crossties which were pressure treated with creosote - coal tar preservative were tested using the cyclic aging technique. This method will be used to establish correlation between short-term accelerated aging test results and long-term in service performance of wood crossties.

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