{"id":3315,"date":"2015-08-17T14:56:28","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T13:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wood-finishes-direct.com\/blog\/?p=3315"},"modified":"2024-03-14T10:33:53","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T10:33:53","slug":"using-wooden-railway-sleepers-in-your-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wood-finishes-direct.com\/blog\/using-wooden-railway-sleepers-in-your-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Wooden Railway Sleepers in Your Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\nRailway sleepers <\/a>are an enormously popular garden building material. They look absolutely beautiful, they’re rugged, they last more or less forever when properly maintained and they play a part in all sorts of creations from garden steps to raised beds to basic garden furniture. Simply pile a load of them up and you’ve got some wonderfully simple seating. Or use two sets of two topped with a piece of wood, glass or even sheet metal to make an outdoor coffee table.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Garden Rail Service<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

They’re versatile, good looking and as solid as a rock – so what are wooden railway sleepers for, where can you buy them, what do they cost, how can they be used and how do you preserve them to keep them in great condition over the years?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About railway sleepers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What are railway sleepers used for? They’re laid horizontally under the metal railway tracks to hold them in place at the right gauge. As such they’re the backbone of rail travel and millions of them are used every year to build new lines and maintain existing ones. While other materials have been tried and tested wood seems to work the best, perhaps because unlike concrete it’s slightly flexible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We love this \n\nlittle piece of research carried out by a clever chap on the railway-sleepers website<\/a>. Curious about how many sleepers there are in Britain, he decided to find out. Here’s what he discovered:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“My first source was a colleague, a man who has been working on the railway for many years. He had no idea when I asked him, but helpfully said that in one chain there were roughly 22-23 timber railway sleepers. So, with there being 80 chains to one mile, all I did was multiply 22.5 by 80, with the result of 1,800 sleepers per mile.
My second source was the Office of Rail Regulation. They publish a Current National Rail Trends yearbook (downloadable). During the period 2010-2011, it claimed that there was 15,777km of track open to both passenger and freight traffic, this equates to roughly 9,803 miles of track.
Armed with these figures, I multiplied 9,803 miles by 1,800 sleepers per mile to give me an approximation of 17,645,400 railway sleepers on open railway in the UK. This is only an approximation, as it doesn\u2019t cover sidings, depots, etc. It also assumes that all terrain is the same, and that all the railway sleepers are made of the same material, and that they have all been installed 100% accurately.”<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Great fun! In fact the entire Railway Sleepers website is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the fine detail. Sleepers might seem simple enough but there’s a lot more to their history than meets the eye.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Railway Sleeper Steps<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Where to buy railway sleepers<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

You can buy new or used sleepers. These days the new ones come in a variety of guises:<\/p>\n\n\n\n