SHORT OF MATERIAL
SLEEPERS ESPECIALLY
WHY RAILWAY WORK LAGS
The great waste involved in leaving the Turakina railway deviation unfinished after £500,000 had been spent on the work was referred to by Mr. H. G. Dickie (National, Patea) when the Public Works Statement was being debated in the House of Representatives yesterday. The Minister of Railways (Mr. Semple) stated in reply that the only reason why the work was held up was that the material necessary had not been available.
Some of the material required for the work was now coming to hand, Mr. Semple said, but there was still great difficulty in securing sleepers. The price of Australian sleepers had been increased and all that were imported had to be carefully examined before they were shipped to make sure that they did not contain termites. The majority of the sleepers used had to be imported because the New Zealand timbers were not"hard enough to hold the spikes. Mr. Semple added that experiments had been carried out with reinforced concrete sleepers and he believed these would be quite suitable for straight runs of line. They were no good for curves, however, because there had to be some give in the spikes when a train was turning.
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Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 77, 27 September 1941, Page 11
Word Count
206SHORT OF MATERIAL Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 77, 27 September 1941, Page 11
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