CONCRETE SLEEPERS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3105, 13 April 1942, Page 3

CONCRETE SLEEPERS

TO REPLACE TIMBER ON BRITAIN’S RAILWAYS Concrete sleepers are being tried out to replace some of the 3,000,000 timber sleepers which railways in Great Britain need each year to maintain their tracks in good condition. Usually these timber sleepers are bought from the Baltic and Scandinavian countries, Canada and Australia. Experiments with concrete sleepers were made, as long as 25 years ago, and have been continued at intervals without, very satisfactory results Now, with many sources of timbe’ supplies closed by the war, and the need to save shipping space, concrete sleepers are being tried out again. Generally the use of concrete sleepers is being confined to sidings, marshalling yards and branch lines —places where high speeds are not required. One company, however, is shortly to make tests on a section of main line. Because full-length concrete sleepers have been found to develop defects under traffic, attention has recently been turned to pairs of concrete blocks, either “tied” together to keep the gauge correct, or interspersed with wooden sleepers. One railway is using 35,000 pairs of such blocks, and by the beginning of next year the output will be at the rate of 70,000 pairs a year. In some centres women are employed on making the blocks.